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The temporal modulation structure of illiterate versus literate adult speech.

ABSTRACT: The temporal modulation structure of speech plays a key role in neural encoding of the speech signal. Amplitude modulations (AMs, quasi-rhythmic changes in signal energy or intensity) in speech are encoded by neuronal oscillations (rhythmic variations in neural excitability in large cell networks) that oscillate at matching temporal rates. To date, however, all neural studies have investigated adult-directed speech (ADS) as produced and perceived by highly literate adults. Whether temporal features of ADS vary with the skills of the speaker, for example literacy skills, is currently unknown. Here we analyse the temporal structure of ADS spoken by illiterate, low literate (? 4 years of literacy) and highly literate (? 12 years of literacy) adults. We find that illiterates produce speech differently. Spontaneous conversational speech produced by illiterate adults showed significantly less synchronised coupling between AM bands (less phase synchronisation) than conversational speech produced by low literate and highly literate adults, and contained significantly fewer syllables per second. There was also a significant relationship between years of literacy and the amount of theta-band energy in conversational speech. When asked to produce rhythmic proverbs learned in childhood, all groups could produce speech with similar AM phase synchronisation, suggesting that the differences in spontaneous conversational speech were not caused by physiological constraints. The data suggest that the temporal modulation structure of spoken language changes with the acquisition of cultural skills like literacy that are usually a product of schooling. There is a cultural effect on the temporal modulation structure of spoken language.

SUBMITTER: Araujo J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6200213 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The temporal modulation structure of illiterate versus literate adult speech.

Araújo João J Flanagan Sheila S Castro-Caldas Alexandre A Goswami Usha U

PloS one 20181024 10

The temporal modulation structure of speech plays a key role in neural encoding of the speech signal. Amplitude modulations (AMs, quasi-rhythmic changes in signal energy or intensity) in speech are encoded by neuronal oscillations (rhythmic variations in neural excitability in large cell networks) that oscillate at matching temporal rates. To date, however, all neural studies have investigated adult-directed speech (ADS) as produced and perceived by highly literate adults. Whether temporal featu ...[more]

PMID: 30356281

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Project description:ObjectivesCochlear implants (CIs) are remarkable in allowing individuals with severe to profound hearing loss to perceive speech. Despite these gains in speech understanding, however, CI users often struggle to perceive elements such as vocal emotion and prosody, as CIs are unable to transmit the spectro-temporal detail needed to decode affective cues. This issue becomes particularly important for children with CIs, but little is known about their emotional development. In a previous study, pediatric CI users showed deficits in voice emotion recognition with child-directed stimuli featuring exaggerated prosody. However, the large intersubject variability and differential developmental trajectory known in this population incited us to question the extent to which exaggerated prosody would facilitate performance in this task. Thus, the authors revisited the question with both adult-directed and child-directed stimuli.DesignVocal emotion recognition was measured using both child-directed (CDS) and adult-directed (ADS) speech conditions. Pediatric CI users, aged 7-19 years old, with no cognitive or visual impairments and who communicated through oral communication with English as the primary language participated in the experiment (n = 27). Stimuli comprised 12 sentences selected from the HINT database. The sentences were spoken by male and female talkers in a CDS or ADS manner, in each of the five target emotions (happy, sad, neutral, scared, and angry). The chosen sentences were semantically emotion-neutral. Percent correct emotion recognition scores were analyzed for each participant in each condition (CDS vs. ADS). Children also completed cognitive tests of nonverbal IQ and receptive vocabulary, while parents completed questionnaires of CI and hearing history. It was predicted that the reduced prosodic variations found in the ADS condition would result in lower vocal emotion recognition scores compared with the CDS condition. Moreover, it was hypothesized that cognitive factors, perceptual sensitivity to complex pitch changes, and elements of each child's hearing history may serve as predictors of performance on vocal emotion recognition.ResultsConsistent with our hypothesis, pediatric CI users scored higher on CDS compared with ADS speech stimuli, suggesting that speaking with an exaggerated prosody-akin to "motherese"-may be a viable way to convey emotional content. Significant talker effects were also observed in that higher scores were found for the female talker for both conditions. Multiple regression analysis showed that nonverbal IQ was a significant predictor of CDS emotion recognition scores while Years using CI was a significant predictor of ADS scores. Confusion matrix analyses revealed a dependence of results on specific emotions; for the CDS condition's female talker, participants had high sensitivity (d' scores) to happy and low sensitivity to the neutral sentences while for the ADS condition, low sensitivity was found for the scared sentences.ConclusionsIn general, participants had higher vocal emotion recognition to the CDS condition which also had more variability in pitch and intensity and thus more exaggerated prosody, in comparison to the ADS condition. Results suggest that pediatric CI users struggle with vocal emotion perception in general, particularly to adult-directed speech. The authors believe these results have broad implications for understanding how CI users perceive emotions both from an auditory communication standpoint and a socio-developmental perspective.

Dataset Information

The temporal modulation structure of illiterate versus literate adult speech.

Publications

The temporal modulation structure of illiterate versus literate adult speech.

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