New Technologies in Second Language Signed Assessment

In this chapter, two signed language technologies are introduced: signed language recognition and signed language synthesis/animation. The modality-specific challenges of these technologies are discussed, originating in the multichannel nature of signs and the lack of a standardized writing system. The state of research of each technology is outlined, demonstrating that the existing body of research is considerably smaller than that of the field of automatic spoken language processing. The chapter describes the combination of the two signed language technologies in real-world applications. Most importantly, it explores the potential application of each technology to second language (L2) signed language assessment. Finally, an example of an existing use case is given: the application of signed language recognition to a vocabulary test for adult L2 learners of Swiss German Sign Language.

Effects of Noise and a Speaker's Impaired Voice Quality on Spoken Language Processing in School-Aged Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose: Background noise and voice problems among teachers can degrade listening conditions in classrooms. The aim of this literature review is to understand how these acoustic degradations affect spoken language processing in 6- to 18-year-old children. Method: In a narrative report and meta-analysis, we systematically review studies that examined the effects of noise and/or impaired voice on children's response accuracy and response time (RT) in listening tasks. We propose the Speech Processing under Acoustic DEgradations (SPADE) framework to classify relevant findings according to three processing dimensions—speech perception, listening comprehension, and auditory working memory—and highlight potential moderators. Results: Thirty-one studies are included in this systematic review. Our meta-analysis shows that noise can impede children's accuracy in listening tasks across all processing dimensions (Cohen's d between −0.67 and −2.65, depending on signal-to-noise ratio) and that impaired voice lowers children's accuracy in listening comprehension tasks ( d = −0.35). A handful of studies assessed RT, but results are inconclusive. The impact of noise and impaired voice can be moderated by listener, task, environmental, and exposure factors. The interaction between noise and impaired voice remains underinvestigated. Conclusions: Overall, this review suggests that children have more trouble perceiving speech, processing verbal messages, and recalling verbal information when listening to speech in noise or to a speaker with dysphonia. Impoverished speech input could impede pupils' motivation and academic performance at school. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17139377

Phasic pupillary responses reveal differential engagement of attentional control in bilingual spoken language processing

Language processing is cognitively demanding, requiring attentional resources to efficiently select and extract linguistic information as utterances unfold. Previous research has associated changes in pupil size with increased attentional effort. However, it is unknown whether the behavioral ecology of speakers may differentially affect engagement of attentional resources involved in conversation. For bilinguals, such an act potentially involves competing signals in more than one language and how this competition arises may differ across communicative contexts. We examined changes in pupil size during the comprehension of unilingual and codeswitched speech in a richly-characterized bilingual sample. In a visual-world task, participants saw pairs of objects as they heard instructions to select a target image. Instructions were either unilingual or codeswitched from one language to the other. We found that only bilinguals who use each of their languages in separate communicative contexts and who have high attention ability, show differential attention to unilingual and codeswitched speech. Bilinguals for whom codeswitching is common practice process unilingual and codeswitched speech similarly, regardless of attentional skill. Taken together, these results suggest that bilinguals recruit different language control strategies for distinct communicative purposes. The interactional context of language use critically determines attentional control engagement during language processing.

Emergence of a compositional neural code for written words: Recycling of a convolutional neural network for reading

The visual word form area (VWFA) is a region of human inferotemporal cortex that emerges at a fixed location in the occipitotemporal cortex during reading acquisition and systematically responds to written words in literate individuals. According to the neuronal recycling hypothesis, this region arises through the repurposing, for letter recognition, of a subpart of the ventral visual pathway initially involved in face and object recognition. Furthermore, according to the biased connectivity hypothesis, its reproducible localization is due to preexisting connections from this subregion to areas involved in spoken-language processing. Here, we evaluate those hypotheses in an explicit computational model. We trained a deep convolutional neural network of the ventral visual pathway, first to categorize pictures and then to recognize written words invariantly for case, font, and size. We show that the model can account for many properties of the VWFA, particularly when a subset of units possesses a biased connectivity to word output units. The network develops a sparse, invariant representation of written words, based on a restricted set of reading-selective units. Their activation mimics several properties of the VWFA, and their lesioning causes a reading-specific deficit. The model predicts that, in literate brains, written words are encoded by a compositional neural code with neurons tuned either to individual letters and their ordinal position relative to word start or word ending or to pairs of letters (bigrams).