The influence of autonomous sensory meridian response on individual’s executive function

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a special perceptual phenomenon in which some people can experience a tingling, static-like sensation in response to some certain auditory/visual stimulations. This study compared the performance of executive function (working memory, set shifting, and inhibitory control) between ASMR participants and control participants after three auditory treatment conditions, i.e., ASMR-triggering audio (Triggering), normal-speaking audio (Normal), and with no auditory treatment (Baseline). The results showed that the ASMR individuals did not differ in executive function with the control participants in either Normal or Baseline condition. However, the set shifting and inhibitory control of ASMR individuals slowed down after ASMR-triggering auditory treatment. In this study, ASMR individuals with ASMR-triggering auditory treatment reported that they all experienced three ASMR episodes before completing executive function tasks. These findings indicated that there was no intrinsic difference in executive function between ASMR and control individuals. But ASMR individuals’ executive function would be interfered when the ASMR was triggered.

Speaking Clearly for Older Adults With Normal Hearing: The Role of Speaking Rate

Purpose Talkers typically use a slow speaking rate when producing clear speech, a speaking style that has been widely shown to improve intelligibility over conversational speech in difficult communication environments. With training, however, talkers can learn to produce a form of clear speech at normal speaking rates that provides young listeners with normal hearing much of the same intelligibility benefit. The purpose of this study was to determine if older listeners with normal hearing can also obtain an intelligibility benefit from clear speech at normal rates. Method Eight older listeners (55–68 years of age) with normal hearing were presented with nonsense sentences from 4 talkers in a background of speech-shaped noise (signal-to-noise ratio = 0 dB). Intelligibility (percent correct key words) was evaluated for conversational and clear speech produced at 2 speaking rates (normal and slow), for a total of 4 conditions: conv/normal, conv/slow, clear/normal, and clear/slow. Results As expected, the clear/slow speaking condition provided a large and robust intelligibility advantage (23 points) over conv/normal speech. The conv/slow condition provided almost as much benefit on average (21 points) but was highly variable across talkers. Notably, the clear/normal speaking condition provided the same size intelligibility advantage (14 points), previously reported for young listeners with normal hearing ( Krause & Braida, 2002 ), thus extending the benefit of clear speech at normal speaking rates to older normal-hearing listeners. Conclusions Applications based on clear/normal speech (e.g., signal processing approaches for hearing aids) have the potential to provide comparable intelligibility improvements to older and younger listeners alike.

Fillers, Repairs and Repetitions in the Conversations of Saudi English Speakers: Conversational Device or Disfluency Markers

Based on the literature review, the three patterns (fillers, repairs and repetitions) in the conversations of the native English speakers are generally regarded as results of the normal speaking between people. On the other hand, the same patterns in the conversations of the L2 speakers are always seen as a marker of disfluency and linguistic disabilities of the nonnative speakers. Therefore, this study simply focuses on finding how the three disfluency patterns are used by the Saudi English speakers from different levels of fluency. The sampling of the study includes two groups of participants from different fluency levels. Through the transcriptions and the discourse analysis of one hour recoding of the two groups, the results showed that the three patterns (fillers, repairs and repetitions) should not be generally associated with disfluency. Instead, repetitions and self-repairs have been equally used by the two groups and such patterns can be used as a conversational device. However, the filler “uh” with longer pausing can clearly predict disfluency among the Saudi English speakers.

Ten- minute makeover

Each of these seven suggestions can make over your presen­tation skills, give your teaching a lift, and better engage your students. As you become more aware of these lifts, watch and listen for good examples in others. 1. Posture. With feet about shoulder width apart, gently and slowly bend forward as far as you can, rolling your spine downward as you go. Keep your body loose and flexible. Roll up slowly with the image that you are stacking your verte­brae one at a time. Continue lifting through your spine to the top of your head. This posture of tall (a different image from straight) is very powerful. When you are tall and relaxed, you appear confident, courageous, strong. Summon this posture when you want to present the best of yourself. 2. Eye expression. Intentionally soften the area around your eyes. Feel the relaxed openness of your eyes, as if you are breathing in softness. Then, intentionally harden your eyes to see the contrast. Watch yourself in the mirror to spot the dif­ferences. Teaching calls for both expressions. 3. Eye lingering. With soft eyes that welcome listeners as you teach or talk, allow your gaze to linger momentarily when you pose a question or make a statement. Eye lingering avoids a darting look that can project worry or lack of confidence. And eye lingering can offer nonverbal support to the person answering your question or listening to your voice. 4. Gestures. Most of us struggle with how to gesture as we speak. Especially when we teach, our gesturing can be mean­ingful, helping to convey confidence and caring about our topic. Notice others who demonstrate good gesturing. Try their techniques. Aim to use fluid movements rather than jerky ones. Show open hands with palms up. Remove hands from pockets. Sometimes holding a book or paper with one hand makes it comfortable to gesture with the other. 5. Voice projection. Speak to those in the back of the room. Learn to project without shouting. Be vocally expressive as you amplify your normal speaking voice. When listeners struggle to hear, their ability and incentive to learn are greatly diminished.

Tunes of different speech styles in Cantonese

Different speech styles come with different tunes. This paper reports the first empirical study of the tunes of different speech styles; namely, opera speaking versus opera singing, opera speaking versus normal speaking, and normal speaking versus normal singing. In all these speech styles, Cantonese lexical tones are well preserved. The data analyses show that speaking and singing differ mainly in pitch slope. Speaking styles are associated with a declining intonation, while singing styles show a slightly ascending tendency. The acoustic data also indicate that a higher pitch register is usually employed when a speech type is considered more conspicuous, such as opera speaking (compared with normal speaking) and normal singing (compared with normal speaking).