An interaction between prosody and statistics in the segmentation of fluent speech.
TL;DR: It is suggested that prosody acts as a filter, suppressing possible word-like sequences that span prosodic constituents that span statistics over the syllables.
About: This article is published in Cognitive Psychology.The article was published on 2007-02-01. It has received 158 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Speech segmentation & Prosody.
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TL;DR: The authors examined four major definitions of reading fluency and their relationship to accuracy, automaticity, and prosody, and proposed a new definition of fluency, which is based on the theoretical perspectives surrounding automaticity.
Abstract: Over the past decade, fluent reading has come to be seen as a central component of skilled reading and a driving force in the literacy curriculum. However, much of this focus has centered on a relatively narrow definition of reading fluency, one that emphasizes automatic word recognition. This article attempts to expand this understanding by synthesizing several key aspects of research on reading fluency, including theoretical perspectives surrounding automaticity and prosody. It examines four major definitions of reading fluency and their relationship to accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. A proposed definition is presented. Finally, the implications of these definitions for current assessment and instruction are considered along with suggestions for reenvisioning fluency's role within literacy curriculum.
عبر العقد الماضي أصبحت مرونة القراءة عنصرا محوريا لمهارة القراءة والقوة القائدة في المنهاج الدراسي المتعلق بمعرفة القراءة والكتابة. ومع ذلك تمحور كثيرا من هذا التركيز على تعريف ضيق نسبيا لدى المرونة القرائية وهو الذي يشدد على التعريف التلقائي على الكلمة. لذا تحاول هذه المقالة إلى توسيع هذا الفهم من خلال تضافر بضعة مظاهر رئيسية من الأبحاث المتعلقة بمرونة القراءة بما فيها أبعاد نظرية حول التلقائية والنثرية. وتفحص المقالة أربعة تعاريف رئيسية لمرونة القراءة وعلاقتها بالدقة والتلقائية والنثرية. ولقد تم تقديم تعريف محتمل وأخيرا يتم الأخذ بعين الاعتبار عواقب هذه التعاريف للتقييم والتعليم بالإضافة إلى إعادة النظر في دور المرونة في منهاج معرفة القراءة والكتابة الدراسي.
在过去十年期间，阅读流畅已被视为熟练阅读的主要部分，亦是读写能力课程的一种驱动力。然而，这种看法大部分聚焦于一个较为狭隘的阅读流畅定义上，只强调自动化识别单字。本文尝试综合处理有关阅读流畅研究的几个主要方面，包括与自动化程度及音韵表达相关的理论观点，藉以增加对阅读流畅的认识。本文检视四个主要的阅读流畅定义，及其与准确性、自动化程度、音韵表达之间的关系，并提出一个较为广阔的阅读流畅定义。最后，本文考量这些定义给目前的评估与教学带来的启示，以及建议重新展望阅读流畅在读写课程中所扮演的角色。
Au cours des dix dernieres annees, la lecture courante est devenue une composante centrale du savoir lire et une locomotive dans les programmes de litteratie. Cependant, une large part de cet interet s'est centre sur une definition relativement etroite de la lecture courante, celle qui met l'accent sur la reconnaissance automatique des mots. Cet article se propose d'elargir cette comprehension en faisant la synthese d'aspects majeurs des recherches relatifs a la lecture courante, notamment des perspectives theoriques concernant l'automaticite, et de la prosodie. Nous proposons une definition alternative. Nous considerons enfin les implications de ces definitions pour l'enseignement et l'evaluation actuels ainsi que des suggestions en vue d'un reexamen du role de la lecture courante dans les programmes de litteratie.
За последнее десятилетие беглость стала основным критерием качества чтения и краеугольным камнем учебных программ по становлению грамотности. Однако само представление о беглости зачастую выглядит достаточно однобоко: упор делается исключительно на автоматическое опознавание слов. Авторы статьи пытаются расширить это представление, синтезировав ключевые аспекты беглости, фигурирующие в различных исследованиях и теоретических работах. Авторы рассматривают четыре существующих определения беглого чтения и их связь с точностью, автоматизмом и просодией и предлагают свое, синтезированное определение. Затем обсуждается значение этих определений для подхода к обучению и оцениванию и предлагается пересмотреть роль такого параметра, как беглость чтения, в программах по развитию грамотности.
En los ultimos diez anos, leer con fluidez se ha convertido en un componente central de la lectura habil y una fuerza principal del curriculo de alfabetizacion. Sin embargo, gran parte de este esfuerzo se ha enfocado en una definicion muy restringida de la fluidez al leer: reconocer palabras automaticamente. Este articulo trata de expandir este entendimiento juntando varios aspectos claves de la investigacion sobre la fluidez al leer, entre ellos perspectivas teoricas sobre la automaticidad y la prosodia. Se examinan cuatro definiciones fundamentales de la fluidez al leer y su relacion a la precision, la automaticidad, y la prosodia. Se sugiere una definicion. Por ultimo, se consideran las implicaciones de estas definiciones para la evaluacion y la instruccion hoy dia y se hacen sugerencias para volver a pensar sobre el rol de la fluidez en el curriculo de alfabetizacion.
487 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that statistical learning not only provides a framework for studying language development and object knowledge in constrained laboratory settings, but also allows researchers to tackle real‐world problems, such as multilingualism, the role of ever‐changing learning environments, and differential developmental trajectories.
Abstract: Perception involves making sense of a dynamic, multimodal environment In the absence of mechanisms capable of exploiting the statistical patterns in the natural world, infants would face an insurmountable computational problem Infant statistical learning mechanisms facilitate the detection of structure These abilities allow the infant to compute across elements in their environmental input, extracting patterns for further processing and subsequent learning In this selective review, we summarize findings that show that statistical learning is both a broad and flexible mechanism (supporting learning from different modalities across many different content areas) and input specific (shifting computations depending on the type of input and goal of learning) We suggest that statistical learning not only provides a framework for studying language development and object knowledge in constrained laboratory settings, but also allows researchers to tackle real-world problems, such as multilingualism, the role of ever-changing learning environments, and differential developmental trajectories
204 citations
Cites background from "An interaction between prosody and ..."
...In the case of the sequential statistics that characterize continuous speech, infants can exploit these regularities in the service of discovering candidate words in fluent speech (for related evidence in younger infants, see Erickson et al. 2014, Saffran 2001b, Shukla et al. 2011)....
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TL;DR: It is argued for a theory of language acquisition that integrates behavioral, cognitive, neural, and evolutionary considerations and proposes to unify previously opposing theoretical stances, such as statistical learning, rule-based nativist accounts, and perceptual learning theories.
Abstract: During the first year of life, infants pass important milestones in language development. We review some of the experimental evidence concerning these milestones in the domains of speech perception, phonological development, word learning, morphosyntactic acquisition, and bilingualism, emphasizing their interactions. We discuss them in the context of their biological underpinnings, introducing the most recent advances not only in language development, but also in neighboring areas such as genetics and the comparative research on animal communication systems. We argue for a theory of language acquisition that integrates behavioral, cognitive, neural, and evolutionary considerations and proposes to unify previously opposing theoretical stances, such as statistical learning, rule-based nativist accounts, and perceptual learning theories.
204 citations
Cites background or methods from "An interaction between prosody and ..."
...For example, in a language with a headcomplement, these technical terms are always spelled with capital initials; in linguistics, it would be better to follow this conventional order: objects follow verbs, nouns follow prepositions, etc. (e.g., eat an apple; on the table)....
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...…the continuous speech stream is not monotonous as used in Saffran et al.’s (1996) original work, but has utterance-like intonational contours overlaid on it, then participants readily segment statistically coherent words inside prosodic contours, but not spanning two contours (Shukla et al. 2007)....
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TL;DR: Study of the strengths and limitations of early learning, and of brain dynamics in relation to regional maturational stages, promise to yield a better understanding of the sources of human cognitive achievements.
196 citations
TL;DR: It is found that 6-mo-old infants can simultaneously segment a nonce auditory word form from prosodically organized continuous speech and associate it to a visual referent, suggesting that learning is enhanced when the language input is well matched to the learner's expectations.
Abstract: Human infants are predisposed to rapidly acquire their native language. The nature of these predispositions is poorly understood, but is crucial to our understanding of how infants unpack their speech input to recover the fundamental word-like units, assign them referential roles, and acquire the rules that govern their organization. Previous researchers have demonstrated the role of general distributional computations in prelinguistic infants’ parsing of continuous speech. We extend these findings to more naturalistic conditions, and find that 6-mo-old infants can simultaneously segment a nonce auditory word form from prosodically organized continuous speech and associate it to a visual referent. Crucially, however, this mapping occurs only when the word form is aligned with a prosodic phrase boundary. Our findings suggest that infants are predisposed very early in life to hypothesize that words are aligned with prosodic phrase boundaries, thus facilitating the word learning process. Further, and somewhat paradoxically, we observed successful learning in a more complex context than previously studied, suggesting that learning is enhanced when the language input is well matched to the learner's expectations.
180 citations
Cites result from "An interaction between prosody and ..."
...These results are consistent with previous findings from adults, who also show better segmentation of nonce words that are internal to (artificially constructed) prosodic phrases compared with nonce words that straddle a phrasal prosodic constituent boundary (31)....
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References
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: The theory of information as discussed by the authors provides a yardstick for calibrating our stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of our subjects and provides a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions.
Abstract: First, the span of absolute judgment and the span of immediate memory impose severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember. By organizing the stimulus input simultaneously into several dimensions and successively into a sequence or chunks, we manage to break (or at least stretch) this informational bottleneck. Second, the process of recoding is a very important one in human psychology and deserves much more explicit attention than it has received. In particular, the kind of linguistic recoding that people do seems to me to be the very lifeblood of the thought processes. Recoding procedures are a constant concern to clinicians, social psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists and yet, probably because recoding is less accessible to experimental manipulation than nonsense syllables or T mazes, the traditional experimental psychologist has contributed little or nothing to their analysis. Nevertheless, experimental techniques can be used, methods of recoding can be specified, behavioral indicants can be found. And I anticipate that we will find a very orderly set of relations describing what now seems an uncharted wilderness of individual differences. Third, the concepts and measures provided by the theory of information provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions. The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating our stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of our subjects. In the interests of communication I have suppressed the technical details of information measurement and have tried to express the ideas in more familiar terms; I hope this paraphrase will not lead you to think they are not useful in research. Informational concepts have already proved valuable in the study of discrimination and of language; they promise a great deal in the study of learning and memory; and it has even been proposed that they can be useful in the study of concept formation. A lot of questions that seemed fruitless twenty or thirty years ago may now be worth another look. In fact, I feel that my story here must stop just as it begins to get really interesting. And finally, what about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? For the present I propose to withhold judgment. Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence.
19,835 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1956
TL;DR: The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating the authors' stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of their subjects, and the concepts and measures provided by the theory provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions.
Abstract: First, the span of absolute judgment and the span of immediate memory impose severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember. By organizing the stimulus input simultaneously into several dimensions and successively into a sequence or chunks, we manage to break (or at least stretch) this informational bottleneck. Second, the process of recoding is a very important one in human psychology and deserves much more explicit attention than it has received. In particular, the kind of linguistic recoding that people do seems to me to be the very lifeblood of the thought processes. Recoding procedures are a constant concern to clinicians, social psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists and yet, probably because recoding is less accessible to experimental manipulation than nonsense syllables or T mazes, the traditional experimental psychologist has contributed little or nothing to their analysis. Nevertheless, experimental techniques can be used, methods of recoding can be specified, behavioral indicants can be found. And I anticipate that we will find a very orderly set of relations describing what now seems an uncharted wilderness of individual differences. Third, the concepts and measures provided by the theory of information provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions. The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating our stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of our subjects. In the interests of communication I have suppressed the technical details of information measurement and have tried to express the ideas in more familiar terms; I hope this paraphrase will not lead you to think they are not useful in research. Informational concepts have already proved valuable in the study of discrimination and of language; they promise a great deal in the study of learning and memory; and it has even been proposed that they can be useful in the study of concept formation. A lot of questions that seemed fruitless twenty or thirty years ago may now be worth another look. In fact, I feel that my story here must stop just as it begins to get really interesting. And finally, what about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? For the present I propose to withhold judgment. Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence.
16,902 citations
"An interaction between prosody and ..." refers background in this paper
...It has been known that edges of sequences are better recalled than their middles (e.g., Ebbinghaus, 1964; Miller, 1956), resulting in ∪-shaped recall curves (Baddeley, 1990; Brown, Preece, & Hulme, 2000)....
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01 Jan 2002
8,837 citations
"An interaction between prosody and ..." refers methods in this paper
...For each IP, we measured the pitch contour, smoothly interpolating across unvoiced segments using PRAAT (Boersma, 2001)....
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...As in the Italian case, for each IP, we measured the pitch contour, smoothly interpolating across unvoiced segments using PRAAT (Boersma, 2001)....
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TL;DR: The revised model differs from the old principally in focussing attention on the processes of integrating information, rather than on the isolation of the subsystems, which provides a better basis for tackling the more complex aspects of executive control in working memory.
6,350 citations
"An interaction between prosody and ..." refers background in this paper
...Indeed, based on several lines of evidence, Baddeley (2000) proposed the existence of an episodic buffer, capable of providing a temporary store of incoming information and information from long-term memory in multimodal codes (see also Baddeley, 2001, 2003; Morey & Cowan, 2005)....
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TL;DR: The concept of working memory proposes that a dedicated system maintains and stores information in the short term, and that this system underlies human thought processes.
Abstract: The concept of working memory proposes that a dedicated system maintains and stores information in the short term, and that this system underlies human thought processes. Current views of working memory involve a central executive and two storage systems: the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad. Although this basic model was first proposed 30 years ago, it has continued to develop and to stimulate research and debate. The model and the most recent results are reviewed in this article.
4,556 citations
"An interaction between prosody and ..." refers background in this paper
...Indeed, based on several lines of evidence, Baddeley (2000) proposed the existence of an episodic buffer, capable of providing a temporary store of incoming information and information from long-term memory in multimodal codes (see also Baddeley, 2001, 2003; Morey & Cowan, 2005)....
[...]