Gesturing is ubiquitous in communication and serves an important function for listeners, who are able to glean meaningful information from the gestures they see. But gesturing also functions for speakers, whose own gestures reduce demands on their working memory. Here we ask whether gesture's beneficial effects on working memory stem from its…

Many theories predict the presence of interactive effects involving information represented by distinct cognitive processes in speech production. There is considerably less agreement regarding the precise cognitive mechanisms that underlie these interactive effects. For example, are they driven by purely production-internal mechanisms (e.g., Dell,…

The term "phrase-level reduction" refers to transformations of the phonetic forms of words in connected speech. They are a characteristic property of fluent speech in normal speakers. Phrase-level reductions contribute to a reduction of articulatory-motor effort and constitute an important aspect of speech naturalness. So far, these phenomena have…

In the current paper, we asked at what level in the speech planning process speakers retrieve stored syllables. There is evidence that syllable structure plays an essential role in the phonological encoding of words (e.g., online syllabification and phonological word formation). There is also evidence that syllables are retrieved as whole units.…

At the one-word stage children use gesture to "supplement" their speech ("eat" + point at cookie), and the onset of such supplementary gesture-speech combinations predicts the onset of two-word speech ("eat cookie"). Gesture thus signals a child's readiness to produce two-word constructions. The question we ask here…

This paper reviews research on the production of referential expressions, examining the choice between explicit and attenuated lexical forms (e.g., pronouns vs. names), and between acoustically prominent and attenuated pronunciations. Both choices can be explained in terms of addressee-design, in that explicit expressions tend to be used in…

Previous research has shown evidence for priming of rate in scripted speech. Two experiments examined the persistence of rate in production of unscripted picture descriptions. In Experiment 1, speakers heard and repeated priming sentences presented at a fast or slow rate and in a passive or active form. Speakers then described a new picture. The…

Three experiments investigated the scope of advance planning in written production. Experiment 1 manipulated phonological factors in single word written production, and Experiments 2 and 3 did the same in the production of adjective-noun utterances. In all three experiments, effects on latencies were found which mirrored those previously…

In theories of spoken language production, the gestural code prescribing the movements of the speech organs is usually viewed as a linear string of holistic, encapsulated, hard-wired, phonetic plans, e.g., of the size of phonemes or syllables. Interactions between phonetic units on the surface of overt speech are commonly attributed to either the…

Four experiments examined the time course of phoneme monitoring in internally and externally generated speech. Aimed to replicate and extend previous findings of Wheeldon and Levelt (1995), who required their Dutch participants to monitor their own prearticulatory speech in order to investigate the generation of an abstract phonological code.…

Previous authors have shown that orthographic experience modifies phonological awareness, yet whether it also impacts on automatic speech processing has not been explored. In the present study, we replicated the effect of early orthographic experience on phonological awareness, and further demonstrated that on-line speech processing varied between…

Tests two accounts of the role of gesture in speaking. Specifically, the study seeks to establish whether gesture is involved in the conceptual planning of messages, or whether it is involved only in the generation of the surface forms of utterances. To accomplish this goal, two tasks were developed that elicit comparable utterances but make…

The role of prosodic breaks (PB) in the parsing of locally ambiguous noun phrases (NP) + verb (V) + NP + prepositional phrase (PP) was examined in four word-monitoring experiments. Results indicate that PBs can influence sentence parsing. The article discusses possible mechanisms in the framework of two models. (32 references) (Author/CK)

Examined effects of limitations in processing resources on error detection in self-produced and other-produced speech by means of a dual task paradigm. A production experiment and a perception experiment were carried out. In both cases, the percentage of repaired errors was larger in the single task condition than in the dual task condition,…

In this paper, we reconsider some of the processes that distinguish production and comprehension. In particular, we discuss the specific forms of thinking involved in each: "thinking for speaking" and "thinking for listening" (Black and Chiat, 2000; Slobin, 1996). We argue that thinking for speaking (or for any form of language output) crucially…