Fluency-related Temporal Features and Syllable Prominence as Prosodic Proficiency Predictors for Learners of English with Different Language Backgrounds

Prosodic features are important in achieving intelligibility, comprehensibility, and fluency in a second or foreign language (L2). However, research on the assessment of prosody as part of oral proficiency remains scarce. Moreover, the acoustic analysis of L2 prosody has often focused on fluency-related temporal measures, neglecting language-dependent stress features that can be quantified in terms of syllable prominence. Introducing the evaluation of prominence-related measures can be of use in developing both teaching and assessment of L2 speaking skills. In this study we compare temporal measures and syllable prominence estimates as predictors of prosodic proficiency in non-native speakers of English with respect to the speaker’s native language (L1). The predictive power of temporal and prominence measures was evaluated for utterance-sized samples produced by language learners from four different L1 backgrounds: Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian. Firstly, the speech samples were assessed using the revised Common European Framework of Reference scale for prosodic features. The assessed speech samples were then analyzed to derive articulation rate and three fluency measures. Syllable-level prominence was estimated by a continuous wavelet transform analysis using combinations of F0, energy, and syllable duration. The results show that the temporal measures serve as reliable predictors of prosodic proficiency in the L2, with prominence measures providing a small but significant improvement to prosodic proficiency predictions. The predictive power of the individual measures varies both quantitatively and qualitatively depending on the L1 of the speaker. We conclude that the possible effects of the speaker’s L1 on the production of L2 prosody in terms of temporal features as well as syllable prominence deserve more attention in applied research and developing teaching and assessment methods for spoken L2.

The biomechanical characteristics of the strongman atlas stone lift

Background The atlas stone lift is a popular strongman exercise where athletes are required to pick up a large, spherical, concrete stone and pass it over a bar or place it on to a ledge. The aim of this study was to use ecologically realistic training loads and set formats to (1) establish the preliminary biomechanical characteristics of athletes performing the atlas stone lift; (2) identify any biomechanical differences between male and female athletes performing the atlas stone lift; and (3) determine temporal and kinematic differences between repetitions of a set of atlas stones of incremental mass. Methods Kinematic measures of hip, knee and ankle joint angle, and temporal measures of phase and repetition duration were collected whilst 20 experienced strongman athletes (female: n = 8, male: n = 12) performed three sets of four stone lifts of incremental mass (up to 85% one repetition maximum) over a fixed-height bar. Results The atlas stone lift was categorised in to five phases: the recovery, initial grip, first pull, lap and second pull phase. The atlas stone lift could be biomechanically characterised by maximal hip and moderate knee flexion and ankle dorsiflexion at the beginning of the first pull; moderate hip and knee flexion and moderate ankle plantarflexion at the beginning of the lap phase; moderate hip and maximal knee flexion and ankle dorsiflexion at the beginning of the second pull phase; and maximal hip, knee extension and ankle plantarflexion at lift completion. When compared with male athletes, female athletes most notably exhibited: greater hip flexion at the beginning of the first pull, lap and second pull phase and at lift completion; and a shorter second pull phase duration. Independent of sex, first pull and lap phase hip and ankle range of motion (ROM) were generally smaller in repetition one than the final three repetitions, while phase and total repetition duration increased throughout the set. Two-way interactions between sex and repetition were identified. Male athletes displayed smaller hip ROM during the second pull phase of the first three repetitions when compared with the final repetition and smaller hip extension at lift completion during the first two repetitions when compared with the final two repetitions. Female athletes did not display these between-repetition differences. Conclusions Some of the between-sex biomechanical differences observed were suggested to be the result of between-sex anthropometric differences. Between-repetition differences observed may be attributed to the increase in stone mass and acute fatigue. The biomechanical characteristics of the atlas stone lift shared similarities with the previously researched Romanian deadlift and front squat. Strongman athletes, coaches and strength and conditioning coaches are recommended to take advantage of these similarities to achieve greater training adaptations and thus performance in the atlas stone lift and its similar movements.

Willingness to Communicate and Second Language Speech Fluency: An Idiodynamic Investigation of Attractor States

Willingness to communicate (WTC) has recently been researched as a dynamic variable, with some investigations viewing it as a complex dynamic system (CDS). One important property associated with CDS is the notion of attractor states, which are characterized by stable patterns of behavior. The present study employed an idiodynamic method to monitor per-second WTC changes with 20 participants during three-minute speaking tasks. Using idiodynamic graphs illustrating the WTC dynamics, patterns of stability were identified as the unit of analysis for WTC attractors. Temporal measures of the utterances that coincided with the WTC attractors were also examined. Results demonstrated that attractors were likely to emerge in both WTC and L2 fluency, and largely depended on two categories of content-related and linguistic-cognitive factors. Data analysis also indicates that WTC and L2 fluency exhibited parallel dynamics in most of the cases. The study’s findings yield pedagogical implications that are discussed at the end.

Hands-on false memories: A combined study with distributional semantics and mouse-tracking

Despite mouse-tracking has been taken as a real-time window into different aspects of human decision-making processes, currently little is known about how the decision process unfolds in veridical and false memory retrieval. Here, we directly investigated these processes by predicting participants’ performance in a mouse-tracking version of a typical Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) task through distributional semantic models, a usage-based approach to meaning. Participants were required to study lists of associated words and then to perform a recognition task with the mouse. Results showed that mouse trajectories were extensively affected by the semantic similarity between the words presented in the recognition phase and the ones previously studied. In particular, the higher the semantic similarity, the larger the conflict driving the choice and the higher the irregularity in the trajectory when correctly rejecting new words (i.e., the false memory items). Conversely, on the temporal evolution of the decision, our results showed that semantic similarity affects more complex temporal measures indexing the online decision processes subserving task performance. Together, these findings demonstrate that semantic similarity can affect human behavior at the level of motor control, testifying its influence on online decision-making processes. More generally, our findings complement previous seminal theories on false memory and provide insights on the impact of the semantic memory structure on different decision-making components.

Bouncing behavior of sub-four minute milers

Elite middle distance runners present as a unique population in which to explore biomechanical phenomena in relation to running speed, as their training and racing spans a broad spectrum of paces. However, there have been no comprehensive investigations of running mechanics across speeds within this population. Here, we used the spring-mass model of running to explore global mechanical behavior across speeds in these runners. Ten elite-level 1500 m and mile runners (mean 1500 m best: 3:37.3 ± 3.6 s; mile: 3:54.6 ± 3.9 s) and ten highly trained 1500 m and mile runners (mean 1500 m best: 4:07.6 ± 3.7 s; mile: 4:27.4 ± 4.1 s) ran on a treadmill at 10 speeds where temporal measures were recorded. Spatiotemporal and spring-mass characteristics and their corresponding variation were calculated within and across speeds. All spatiotemporal measures changed with speed in both groups, but the changes were less substantial in the elites. The elite runners ran with greater approximated vertical forces (+ 0.16 BW) and steeper impact angles (+ 3.1°) across speeds. Moreover, the elites ran with greater leg and vertical stiffnesses (+ 2.1 kN/m and + 3.6 kN/m) across speeds. Neither group changed leg stiffness with increasing speeds, but both groups increased vertical stiffness (1.6 kN/m per km/h), and the elite runners more so (further + 0.4 kN/m per km/h). The elite runners also demonstrated lower variability in their spatiotemporal behavior across speeds. Together, these findings suggested that elite middle distance runners may have distinct global mechanical patterns across running speeds, where they behave as stiffer, less variable spring-mass systems compared to highly trained, but sub-elite counterparts.

Mental chronometry in big noisy data

Temporal measures (latencies) in the event-related potentials of the EEG (ERPs) are a valuable tool for mental chronometry. In large scale studies with a multitude of single EEG-based tasks the quality of latency measures often suffers from high and low frequency noise due to low trial counts (because of compressed tasks) and the missing opportunity of visual inspection. In the present study, we systematically evaluated two different approaches to latency estimation (peak latencies and fractional area latencies) with respect to their data quality and the application of noise reduction by jackknifing methods. Additionally, we tested the recently introduced method of Standardized Measurement Error (SME) to prune the dataset. We demonstrate that fractional area latency in pruned and jackknifed data may amplify within-subjects effect sizes by the factor ten in the analyzed data set. Between-subjects effects were less affected by the applied procedure, but remained stable regardless of procedure.

A (not so) random walk through hydrological space and time

<p>A key philosophical perspective in science is that nature obeys general laws. Identification of these laws involves integration of system conceptualization, observation, experimentation and quantification. This perspective was a guiding principle of John Dalton’s research as he searched for patterns and common behaviors; he performed a broad range of experiments in chemistry and physics, and he entered over 200,000 observations in his meteorological diary during a period of 57 years. In this spirit, we examine general concepts based largely on statistical physics – universality, criticality, self-organization, and the relationship between spatial and temporal measures – and demonstrate how they meaningfully describe patterns and processes of fluid flow and chemical transport in hydrological systems. We discuss examples that incorporate random walks, percolation theory, fractals, and thermodynamics in analyses of hydrological systems – aquifers, soil environments and catchments – to quantify what appear to be universal dynamic behaviors and characterizations.</p>

The Role of Information in Managing Interactions from a Multifractal Perspective

In the framework of the multifractal hydrodynamic model, the correlations informational entropy–cross-entropy manages attractive and repulsive interactions through a multifractal specific potential. The classical dynamics associated with them imply Hubble-type effects, Galilei-type effects, and dependences of interaction constants with multifractal degrees at various scale resolutions, while the insertion of the relativistic amendments in the same dynamics imply multifractal transformations of a generalized Lorentz-type, multifractal metrics invariant to these transformations, and an estimation of the dimension of the multifractal Universe. In such a context, some correspondences with standard cosmologies are analyzed. Since the same types of interactions can also be obtained as harmonics mapping between the usual space and the hyperbolic plane, two measures with uniform and non-uniform temporal flows become functional, temporal measures analogous with Milne’s temporal measures in a more general manner. This work furthers the analysis published recently by our group in “Towards Interactions through Information in a Multifractal Paradigm”.