Academic literature on the topic 'Meaningful irrelevant speech'

The irrelevant speech effect (ISE) refers to the impairment of visual information processing by background speech. Prior research on the ISE has focused on short-term memory for visually presented word lists. The present research extends this work by using measurements of eye movements to examine effects of irrelevant background speech during Chinese reading. This enabled an examination of the ISE for a language in which access to semantic representations is not strongly mediated by phonology. Participants read sentences while exposed to meaningful irrelevant speech, meaningless speech (scrambled meaningful speech) or silence. A target word of high or low lexical frequency was embedded in each sentence. The results show that meaningful, but not meaningless, background speech produced increased re-reading. In addition, the appearance of a normal word frequency effect, characterised by longer fixation times on low- compared to high-frequency words, was delayed when meaningful or meaningless speech was present in the background. These findings show that irrelevant background speech can disrupt normal processes of reading comprehension and, in addition, that background noise can interfere with the early processing of words. The findings add to evidence showing that normal reading processes can be disrupted by environmental noise such as irrelevant background speech.

Formal thought disorder is a feature schizophrenia that manifests as disorganized, incoherent speech, and is associated with a poor clinical outcome. The neurocognitive basis of this symptom is unclear but it is thought to involve an impairment in semantic processing classically described as a loosening of meaningful associations. Using a paradigm derived from the n400 event-related, potential, we examined the extent to which regional activation during semantic processing is altered in schizophrenic patients with formal thought disorder. Ten healthy control and 18 schizophrenic participants (9 with and 9 without formal thought disorder) performed a semantic decision sentence task during an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. We employed analysis of variance to estimate the main effects of semantic congruency and groups on activation and specific effects of formal thought disorder were addressed using post-hoc comparisons. We found that the frontotemporal network, normally engaged by a semantic decision task, was underactivated in schizophrenia, particularly in patients with FTD. This network is implicated in the inhibition of automatically primed stimuli and impairment of its function interferes with language processing and contributes to the production of incoherent speech.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to generate a theory grounded in data explaining caregivers' understanding of their child's language disorder and the perceived role of speech-language pathologists in facilitating this knowledge. Method This study employed grounded theory as a conceptual framework. Qualitative data were generated based on semistructured interviews conducted with 12 mothers of children who had received speech-language pathology services. Results The following themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) Many mothers reported receiving confusing or irrelevant diagnostic terms for language disorder, (b) mothers of children with language disorders were distressed about their children's language problems, (c) mothers did not always trust or understand their children's speech-language pathologist, and (d) mothers were satisfied with the interventions their child had been receiving. Mothers described their children's language disorder using a total of 23 labels, most of which were not useful for accessing meaningful information about the nature of their child's communication problem. Generally, mothers reported they did not receive language-related diagnostic labels from speech-language pathologists for their child's language disorder. Conclusions Two theories were generated from the results: (a) Lack of information provided to mothers about their child's language disorder causes mothers psychological harm that appears to be long lasting. (b) Difficulties in successfully relaying information about language disorders to parents result in negative perceptions of speech-language pathology. Implications and future directions are discussed. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12177390

AbstractSpeech perception involves mapping from a continuous and variable acoustic speech signal to discrete, linguistically meaningful units. However, it is unclear where in the auditory processing stream speech sound representations cease to be veridical (faithfully encoding precise acoustic properties) and become categorical (encoding sounds as linguistic categories). In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analysis to determine whether tonotopic primary auditory cortex (PAC), defined as tonotopic voxels falling within Heschl’s gyrus, represents one class of speech sounds—vowels—veridically or categorically. For each of 15 participants, 4 individualized synthetic vowel stimuli were generated such that the vowels were equidistant in acoustic space, yet straddled a categorical boundary (with the first 2 vowels perceived as [i] and the last 2 perceived as [i]). Each participant’s 4 vowels were then presented in a block design with an irrelevant but attention-demanding level change detection task. We found that in PAC bilaterally, neural discrimination between pairs of vowels that crossed the categorical boundary was more accurate than neural discrimination between equivalently spaced vowel pairs that fell within a category. These findings suggest that PAC does not represent vowel sounds veridically, but that encoding of vowels is shaped by linguistically relevant phonemic categories.

This paper assumes that the literary work of art is a "stratified system of norms", and that the description of each stratum may require a different kind of logic. One of the main problems is the meaningful integration of these descriptions. A speech sound may be described on an acoustic, a phonetic and a phonemic level; normally, its acoustic description is irrelevant to its linguistic or poetic significance. However, in certain circumstances, the acoustic description may account for the emotional quality of the speech sound, may yield insight into the rhythmic structure of a poem (or just of a performance thereof), etc. Furthermore, pieces of poetry may be used to illustrate psychological theories about the aesthetic event; or psychological theories may be used to yield insight into the aesthetic nature of pieces of poetry. The paper focuses on the methodological issues involved in foregrounding the possible aesthetic significance of the transitions from one level of description to another. In doing this, it attempts to carefully navigate between two theoretical extremes: a reductionist view of literary theory according to which all the "special sciences " can be reduced to "more basic sciences" and, eventually, to physics; and the one formulated by Wellek and Warren (1956:135) as follows: "The psychology of the reader, however interesting in itself and useful for pedagogical purposes, will always remain outside the object of literary study [...] it must be unrelated either to the structure or the quality of a poem ". The middle course here proposed relies on "the principle of marginal control", that is, "the control exercised by the organizational principle of a higher level on the particulars forming its lower level" (Polânyi, 1967: 40). Paraphrasing Polânyi, the principles of literature may be said to govern the boundary conditions of a cognitive system—a set of conditions that is explicitly left undetermined by the laws of lower processes — physical, cognitive, and linguistic. If one knows more about these "lower" processes, one may get a better understanding of the principles of literature that govern those boundary conditions. It is claimed that in this way Cognitive Poetics is capable of discerning and explaining significant literary phenomena which present insurmountable difficulties to other approaches.

Objectives.The general objectives of this dissertationwere to examine the effects of acute exposure to meaningfulirrelevant speech and road traffic noise on memory performance,and to explore annoyance responses to noise exposure in theschool environment for pupils and teachers in different agegroups.

Methods. The thesis comprises seven papers, representingdifferent methodological approaches: experiments, surveystudies and interviews. In the experiments, reported in PapersI-V, 288 pupils and teachers participated in the age groups,13-14 years (n=96), 18-20 years (n=96), 35-45 years (n=48) and55-65 years (n=48). The subjects were randomly assigned to oneof three conditions: (a) meaningful irrelevant speech, (b) roadtraffic noise, and (c) silence. The equivalent sound level inthe noise conditions was set to 66 dB(A). A test batteryreflecting episodic and semantic memory were used. The surveystudies, reported in Paper VI and VII, included 207 pupils(M=13.5) and 166 teachers (M=45.9). Two separate questionnairesmainly comprising items about annoyance, noise sensitivity andstress symptoms were administered. Paper VI presents results offocus group interviews (n=16) treating the main topics:disturbing sounds, emotions, ongoing activity, and suggestionsconcerning future changes. Results. The overall findings showedthat both noise sources affected episodic and semantic memoryto the same degree for all age groups. The results indicatedthat the similarity of semantic content between noise and thetask at hand was not the only suitable explanation model, sincea non-speech noise impaired memory as much as speech.

Resultsalso indicated that attention effects did notmediate the obtained noise effects and that the noise effectsdid not differ between age groups. Therefore, it seemedunlikely that different memory and attentional capacities stoodout as explanatory factors of the memory effects. Sinceperformances of both episodic and semantic memory tasks wereimpaired, the explanation based on level of access to long-termmemory was also ruled out. However, the episodic memory task,reading comprehension, stood out to be most impaired by noise,suggesting that complexity of the task to perform was ofimportance. For reading comprehension there was also adifferent noise pattern obtained. Participants performance wasin this task, more impaired by meaningful irrelevant speechthan by road traffic noise. This effect indicated thatmeaningful irrelevant speech might reduce the availablecognitive resources necessary for learning the text. Theannoyance models derived from the survey studies indicated thatsensitivity acted as a mediator between hearing status andannoyance, with stress symptoms as an outcome. Whetherannoyance arises or not was also determined by control andpredictability of the noise. In the interviews a differentannoyance pattern was found, in that stress symptoms appearedto be a determinant of annoyance. To be involved, respected,take own responsibility and respect others were suggestions onhow to change the environment to become more silent.

Conclusions.For both pupils and teachers acute exposureto meaningful irrelevant speech and road traffic noiseinfluenced both the achieving and providing of knowledge. Acommon annoyance pattern was also found for pupils andteachers, where individual and situational factors were ofimportance. To achieve a more silent school environment in thefuture, the pupils pointed out that the interaction betweenthemselves and their teachers was of importance.

Key words:Noise, meaningful irrelevant speech, roadtraffic noise, memory, age groups, school environment, pupils,teachers

Chapter 5 describes the contestation and consolidation of this trope, and the beginning of its transformation from a vindication of protest into the foundation of an American natural community. Illustrating the close relationship between English-language state of nature texts on both sides of the Atlantic, the chapter follows the rapid expansion of the state of nature discourse to constitutional issues such as the freedom of conscience and opinion, the freedom of speech and of the press, secession, the right to meaningful representation, and the relevance or irrelevance of rights guaranteed under competing versions of a semi-mythical ancient constitutionalism. The chapter carries previous analyses of rival loyalist and patriot interpretations of the state of nature on to these topics.