Language Processing and the Human Brain
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Linguistic Processing of Task-Irrelevant Speech at a Cocktail Party Paz Har-Shai Yahav*, Elana Zion Golumbic*
RESEARCH ARTICLE Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a cocktail party Paz Har-shai Yahav*, Elana Zion Golumbic* The Gonda Center for Multidisciplinary Brain Research, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Abstract Paying attention to one speaker in a noisy place can be extremely difficult, because to- be-attended and task-irrelevant speech compete for processing resources. We tested whether this competition is restricted to acoustic-phonetic interference or if it extends to competition for linguistic processing as well. Neural activity was recorded using Magnetoencephalography as human participants were instructed to attend to natural speech presented to one ear, and task- irrelevant stimuli were presented to the other. Task-irrelevant stimuli consisted either of random sequences of syllables, or syllables structured to form coherent sentences, using hierarchical frequency-tagging. We find that the phrasal structure of structured task-irrelevant stimuli was represented in the neural response in left inferior frontal and posterior parietal regions, indicating that selective attention does not fully eliminate linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech. Additionally, neural tracking of to-be-attended speech in left inferior frontal regions was enhanced when competing with structured task-irrelevant stimuli, suggesting inherent competition between them for linguistic processing. Introduction *For correspondence: The seminal speech-shadowing experiments conducted in the 50 s and 60 s set the stage for study- [email protected] (PH-Y); ing one of the primary cognitive challenges encountered in daily life: how do our perceptual and lin- [email protected] (EZG) guistic systems deal effectively with competing speech inputs? (Cherry, 1953; Broadbent, 1958; Treisman, 1960). -
Language Development Language Development
Language Development rom their very first cries, human beings communicate with the world around them. Infants communicate through sounds (crying and cooing) and through body lan- guage (pointing and other gestures). However, sometime between 8 and 18 months Fof age, a major developmental milestone occurs when infants begin to use words to speak. Words are symbolic representations; that is, when a child says “table,” we understand that the word represents the object. Language can be defined as a system of symbols that is used to communicate. Although language is used to communicate with others, we may also talk to ourselves and use words in our thinking. The words we use can influence the way we think about and understand our experiences. After defining some basic aspects of language that we use throughout the chapter, we describe some of the theories that are used to explain the amazing process by which we Language9 A system of understand and produce language. We then look at the brain’s role in processing and pro- symbols that is used to ducing language. After a description of the stages of language development—from a baby’s communicate with others or first cries through the slang used by teenagers—we look at the topic of bilingualism. We in our thinking. examine how learning to speak more than one language affects a child’s language develop- ment and how our educational system is trying to accommodate the increasing number of bilingual children in the classroom. Finally, we end the chapter with information about disorders that can interfere with children’s language development. -
Dichotic Training in Children with Auditory Processing Disorder
International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology 110 (2018) 114–117 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijporl Dichotic training in children with auditory processing disorder T ∗ Maryam Delphia, Farzaneh Zamiri Abdollahib, a Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran b Audiology Department, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Objectives: Several test batteries have been suggested for auditory processing disorder (APD) diagnosis. One of Dichotic listening the important tests is dichotic listening tests. Significant ear asymmetry (usually right ear advantage) can be Auditory training indicative of (APD). Two main trainings have been suggested for dichotic listening disorders: Differential Auditory processing Interaural Intensity Difference (DIID) and Dichotic Offset Training (DOT). The aim of the present study was comparing the efficacy of these two trainings in resolving dichotic listening disorders. Methods: 12 children in the age range of 8 to 9 years old with APD were included (mean age 8.41 years old ± 0.51). They all had abnormal right ear advantage based on established age-appropriate norms for Farsi dichotic digit test. Then subjects were randomly divided into two groups (each contained 6 subjects): group 1 received DIID training (8.33 years old ± 0.51) and group 2 received DOT training (8.50 years old ± 0.54). Results: Both trainings were effective in improvement of dichotic listening. There was a significant difference between two trainings with respect to the length of treatment (P-value≤0.001). DOT needed more training sessions (12.83 ± 0.98 sessions) than DIID (21.16 ± 0.75 sessions) to achieve the same amount of performance improvement. -
Neural Encoding of Attended Continuous Speech Under Different Types of Interference
Neural Encoding of Attended Continuous Speech under Different Types of Interference Andrea Olguin, Tristan A. Bekinschtein, and Mirjana Bozic Abstract ■ We examined how attention modulates the neural encoding Critically, however, the type of the interfering stream significantly of continuous speech under different types of interference. In modulated this process, with the fully intelligible distractor an EEG experiment, participants attended to a narrative in English (English) causing the strongest encoding of both attended and while ignoring a competing stream in the other ear. Four different unattended streams and latest dissociation between them and types of interference were presented to the unattended ear: a nonintelligible distractors causing weaker encoding and early dis- different English narrative, a narrative in a language unknown to sociation between attended and unattended streams. The results the listener (Spanish), a well-matched nonlinguistic acoustic inter- were consistent over the time course of the spoken narrative. ference (Musical Rain), and no interference. Neural encoding of These findings suggest that attended and unattended information attended and unattended signals was assessed by calculating can be differentiated at different depths of processing analysis, cross-correlations between their respective envelopes and the with the locus of selective attention determined by the nature EEG recordings. Findings revealed more robust neural encoding of the competing stream. They provide strong support to flexible for the attended envelopes compared with the ignored ones. accounts of auditory selective attention. ■ INTRODUCTION “late selection” approaches. The early selection theory Directingattentiontoasinglespeakerinamultitalker (Broadbent, 1958) argued that, because of our limited environment is an everyday occurrence that we manage processing capacity, attended and unattended informa- with relative ease. -
Review: a Study in Human Capacities Reviewed Work(S): Genie. A
Review: A Study in Human Capacities Reviewed Work(s): Genie. A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day "Wild Child" by Susan Curtiss Susan Goldin-Meadow Science, New Series, Vol. 200, No. 4342. (May 12, 1978), pp. 649-651. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-8075%2819780512%293%3A200%3A4342%3C649%3AASIHC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P Science is currently published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/aaas.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. -
Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity and Divided Attention in Dichotic Listening
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2007, 14 (4), 699-703 Individual differences in working memory capacity and divided attention in dichotic listening GREGORY J. H. COLFLESH University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois AND ANDREW R. A. CONWAY Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey The controlled attention theory of working memory suggests that individuals with greater working memory capacity (WMC) are better able to control or focus their attention than individuals with lesser WMC. This re- lationship has been observed in a number of selective attention paradigms including a dichotic listening task (Conway, Cowan, & Bunting, 2001) in which participants were required to shadow words presented to one ear and ignore words presented to the other ear. Conway et al. found that when the participant’s name was presented to the ignored ear, 65% of participants with low WMC reported hearing their name, compared to only 20% of participants with high WMC, suggesting greater selective attention on the part of high WMC participants. In the present study, individual differences in divided attention were examined in a dichotic listening task, in which participants shadowed one message and listened for their own name in the other message. Here we find that 66.7% of high WMC and 34.5% of low WMC participants detected their name. These results suggest that as WMC capacity increases, so does the ability to control the focus of attention, with high WMC participants being able to flexibly “zoom in” or “zoom out” depending on task demands. Since Baddeley and Hitch (1974) first published their tasks). They found no difference between high and low seminal chapter on working memory (WM), many theo- WMC participants in the prosaccade task but high WMC ries regarding the construct have been proposed. -
Theory of Mind and Communication in Autism Francesca Gabrielle
Theory of Mind and Communication in Autism Francesca Gabrielle Elizabeth Happe, MRC Cognitive Development Unit, and Department of Psychology, University College, London. Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Psychology, University of London. October, 1991. 1 Acknowledgements My greatest thanks must go to Uta Frith, who made writing this thesis not only possible but pleasurable. I have benefitted enormously from her unstinting encouragement, her insightful criticisms, and her great kindness. I would also like to thank all my colleagues at the MRC Cognitive Development Unit, particularly Annette Kanniloff-Smith, Alan Leslie and John Morton, for teaching me so much which I hadn't realised I didn't know. Thanks also go to Fran Siddons, James Blair and other friends, who have been invaluable in the discussion of fledgling ideas. I am also extremely grateful to the autistic children and adults who took part in the studies reported here. They, along with their teachers and parents, have taught me a great deal about autism, and shown me how much more there is still to discover. Lastly, my thanks go to my family for their unfailing support and enthusiasm. A.M.D.G. 2 Abstract Recent work investigating the biological and cognitive nature of autism is reviewed. The hypothesis that autistic individuals suffer from a specific impairment in theory of mind, and the relevance of this notion to the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, is discussed. Theory of mind explanations of autism must account for the minority of autistic subjects who pass false belief tasks. Two possible accounts are considered; delay versus "hacking". -
Language & the Brain Broca's Aphasia Wernicke's Aphasia the ARCUATE FASCICULUS Bilinguals: a Neural Signature?
10/8/2009 Language & The Brain Broca’s Aphasia Dr. Gardner: “Were you in the Broca’s Coast Guard?” Area Broca’s Area Mr. Ford (patient): “No, er, yes, yes … ship … Massachu … chusetts … Coastguard…years”. He held up his hand twice indicating 19. Gardner H. The Shattered Mind. New York: Vintage Books, 1974, pp 60-61 Posterior Speech 1. Language Comprehension (good) Areas Including Wernicke’s Area 2. Speech Production (impaired): • Nonfluent • Words improperly formed Posterior Speech Areas • Slow and slurred Including Wernicke’s • Paraphasic errors: “purnpike” Area (for turnpike) Wernicke’s Aphasia THE ARCUATE FASCICULUS Dr. Gardner: “What brings you to Broca’s the hospital?” I asked the 72- Area year-old retired butcher four weeks after his admission to the hospital. White Matter Tract that connects Broca’s Area and Mr. Gorgan (patient): Wernicke’s Area “Boy, I’m sweating, I’m awful nervous, you know, once in a while I get caught up, I can’t mention the tarripoi, a month agok, quite a Damage: Conduction Aphasia Posterior Speech little, I’ve done a lot well, I Areas Including impose a lot, while on the other 1. Language Comprehension: Wernicke’s Area hand, you know what I mean, I intact In 97% of people, both Broca's Area and have to run around, look it over, Wernicke's Area only on left hemisphere. 2. Fluent speech with some trebbin and all that sort of stuff. 1. Language Comprehension (poor) paraphasic errors Gardner H. The Shattered Mind. New York: Vintage Books, 3. Inability to repeat words 2. Speech fluent but nonsensical 1974, pp 67-68 3. -
Broadbent's Filter Theory Cherry: the Cocktail Party Problem
194 Part II ● Cognitive psychology KEY STUDY EVALUATION — Cherry Cherry: The cocktail party problem The research by Colin Cherry is a very good example of how a psycholo- gist, noticing a real-life situation, is able to devise a hypothesis and carry Cherry (1953) found that we use physical differences between out research in order to explain a phenomenon, in this case the “cocktail the various auditory messages to select the one of interest. party” effect. Cherry tested his ideas in a laboratory using a shadowing These physical differences include differences in the sex of the technique and found that participants were really only able to give infor- speaker, in voice intensity, and in the location of the speaker. mation about the physical qualities of the non-attended message When Cherry presented two messages in the same voice to (whether the message was read by a male or a female, or if a tone was both ears at once (thereby removing these physical differences), used instead of speech). Cherry’s research could be criticised for having moved the real-life phenomenon into an artificial laboratory setting. the participants found it very hard to separate out the two However, this work opened avenues for other researchers, beginning with messages purely on the basis of meaning. Broadbent, to elaborate theories about focused auditory attention. Cherry (1953) also carried out studies using a shadowing task, in which one auditory message had to be shadowed (repeated back out aloud) while a second auditory message was presented to the other ear. Very little information seemed to be obtained from the second or non-attended message. -
Evaluating CAPDOTS Training for Children and Adolescents with APD by Jay R
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE Evaluating CAPDOTS Training for Children and Adolescents with APD By Jay R. Lucker, EdD, CCC-A/SLP, FAAA; Cydney Fox, AuD; and Bea Braun, AuD uditory processing disorders (APD) in school-age children can lead to learning problems.1 Audiolo- gists may determine the presence or absence of APD in this population and make specific thera- Apeutic recommendations. However, many therapies for APD have not been peer-reviewed or examined with statistical analysis to determine efficacy. The present study evaluates a therapeutic option called CAPDOTS-Integrated (also referred to as CAPDOTS), an online training program that aims to im- prove dichotic listening problems. According to Jerger, “Dichotic listening (DL) tests are at the core of the diagnostic evaluation of auditory processing disorder... [Such tests] have been used for decades both as 2 screening tools and as diagnostic tests in APD evaluation.” Thus, audiologists evaluating school-aged children for APD AdobeStock may find these children to have dichotic listening problems. Those diagnosed with dichotic listening problems are rec- subjects.2 The 27-year-old subject identified as diagnosed ommended to try a dichotic listening training program, such with “binaural integration deficit” only completed 80 percent as CAPDOTS-Integrated.1 Presently, CAPDOTS-Integrated of the CAPDOTS training. The 16-year-old subject is re- claims to treat binaural auditory integration problems known ported diagnosed with a binaural integration (dichotic listen- as dichotic listening difficulties. CAPDOTS is a treatment ing) auditory processing disorder. Results of mid-latency program requiring access to the internet and good quality electrophysiological measures revealed increased response headphones. -
Attentional Strategies in Dichotic Listening
Memory & Cognition 1979, Vol. 7 (6),511.520 Attentional strategies in dichotic listening JACK BOOKBINDER and ELI OSMAN Brooklyn College ofthe City University ofNew York, Brooklyn, New York 11210 A person can attend to a message in one ear while seemingly ignoring a simultaneously presented verbal message in the other ear. There is considerable controversy over the extent to which the unattended message is actually processed. This issue was investigated by presenting dichotic messages to which the listeners responded by buttonpressing (not shadow ing) to color words occurring in the primary ear message while attempting to detect a target word in either the primary ear or secondary ear message. Less than 40% of the target words were detected in the secondary ear message, whereas for the primary ear message (and also for either ear in a control experiment), target detection was approximately 80%. Furthermore. there was a significant negative correlation between buttonpressing performance and secondary ear target-detection performance. The results were interpreted as being inconsistent with automatic processing theories of attention. The dichotic listening paradigm, beginning with the processing system. Early selection models (Broadbent, experiments of Broadbent (1958) and Cherry (1953), 1958,1971; Treisman, 1960, 1964; Treisman & Geffen, has played a central role in the study of attention during 1967) allow for analyses of simple physical features the past two decades. In a dichotic presentation, differ simultaneously (e.g., spatial location, voice pitch), while ent auditory messages are simultaneously presented to it is postulated that the simultaneous higher order (Le., the subject's right and left ears by means of stereo head semantic context) analysis of all inputs would overload phones. -
Language Acquisition
HOMEWORK 10: Language Acquisition. QUESTION 1: FROM ADULT TO CHILD GRAMMAR: PHONOLOGICAL RULES. In class, we discussed the ways in which children tend to simplify the pronunciation of certain adult sounds at early stages of the language acquisition process. Children are generally quite consistent in their replacements and substitutions at any given time, and that we can actually state phonological rules to derive their pronunciation from the adult one. For example, for the common child pronunciations [wUk] for look and [tw k] for truck we could say something like "replace all liquids (l,r) with the glide [w]". Come up with rules to describe the replacements and deletions of sounds in the following examples. That is, a) For each word, state the changes that are made to convert an adult pronunciation into this child's form; b) Summarize the general changes based on all the words. Remember that phonological rules usually don't refer to specific sounds like [p], but to natural classes like "voiceless stops". Thus the general rules you give in this part should also be stated in terms of natural classes rather than specific sounds wherever possible. a. Smith [mIt] b. skin [kIn] c. play [pe] d. zoo [du] e. John [dan] f. bath [bæt] g. tent [t t] h. teddy [t di] i. crush [k t] j. bump [b p] c) Based on this pattern, what is the expected pronunciation of the following words? Give answers in phonetic transcription; identify the changes that you predict. k. stop l. junk m. thumb n. zebra 1 QUESTION 2: GENIE: THE STORY OF A ‘WILD CHILD’ a) Read this background information (various sources): Genie was discovered by the authorities at the age of 13, having been kept in virtual isolation for most of her life, and treated cruelly by her father (her nearly blind and totally helpless mother was more of a victim than a participant in this cruelty).