Purpose: Despite the import of conversational entrainment to successful spoken dialogue, the systematic characterization of this behavioral syncing phenomenon represents a critical gap in the field of speech pathology. The goal of this study was to acoustically characterize conversational entrainment in the context of dysarthria using a…

Skills in discussing substantive issues are vital in any job or civic role--and even in family life. Anne Vilen and Ron Berger, leaders in the Expeditionary Learning Schools network, detail how Casco Bay High School and other EL schools have established structures and programs to ensure courageous discussions are a regular part of learning for…

This paper is a revised version of a plenary prompted by the upsurge of interest in the role of pragmatics in teaching, learning, and assessment, and has as its purpose to take a fresh look at recent developments in the assessment of target-language (TL) pragmatics in spoken language. The first issue considered is the question of whether to…

Purpose: Word learning difficulties have been documented in multiple studies involving children with dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD; see also specific language impairment). However, no previous studies have directly contrasted word learning in these two frequently co-occurring disorders. We examined word learning in second-grade…

Purpose: Individuals with cerebellar ataxia (CA) caused by cerebellar degeneration exhibit larger reactive compensatory responses to unexpected auditory feedback perturbations than neurobiologically typical speakers, suggesting they may rely more on feedback control during speech. We test this hypothesis by examining variability in unaltered…

This study formalizes and compares two major hypotheses in speakers' choices of referring expressions: the topicality model that chooses a form based on the topicality of the referent, and the rational model that chooses a form based on the informativity of the form and its speech cost. Simulations suggest that both the topicality of the referent…

Purpose: Dynamic pitch, which is defined as the variation in fundamental frequency, is an acoustic cue that aids speech perception in noise. This study examined the effects of strengthened and weakened dynamic pitch cues on older listeners' speech perception in noise, as well as how these effects were modulated by individual factors including…

This investigation examined the existence of interconnectedness between developing linguistic subsystems. Spontaneous speech samples were collected from 31 typically-developing Greek-speaking toddlers across two age levels, at 28 and 36 months. Correlational analyses were performed synchronically and predictively, revealing significant positive…

The influence of visual impairment (i.e., blindness or low vision) on the development of children's speech sound production has undergone some speculation for over half a century. Children learn to produce speech sounds by utilizing and integrating several cognitive-linguistic and sensory-perceptual processes, which may include processing visual…

Purpose: Word recognition in quiet and in background noise has been thoroughly investigated in previous research to establish segmental speech recognition performance as a function of stimulus characteristics (e.g., audibility). Similar methods to investigate recognition performance for suprasegmental information (e.g., acoustic cues used to make…

The reciprocal nature of spoken interaction means that participants constantly alternate between speaker and listener roles. However, listener or recipient actions--also known as interactive listening (IL)--are somewhat underrepresented in language tests. In conventional listening tests, they are not directly assessed. In speaking tests, they have…

An analysis of the state of pedagogical practice and scientific and methodological literature speaks of shortcomings in solving the problem of the formation of elementary schoolchildren's speech skills. This article is devoted to the formation of elementary schoolchildren's speech skills in interdisciplinary communication. The purpose of our…

Background: Despite its importance, in-depth analysis of connected speech is often neglected in the diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) -- especially for the logopenic variant (lvPPA) for which unreliable differential diagnosis has been documented. Only a few studies have been conducted on this topic in lvPPA. Aims: The aim of this…

This present research analyses the linguistic environmental setting in homes of children under the age of two years from different social groups and looks at the extent to which the speech from other children contributes to shaping that environment. The corpus includes recordings of spontaneous speech from middle-class households in residential…

This dissertation examines how listeners' knowledge of interspeaker variability guides their generalization of perceptual learning in multi-talker listening. A series of perceptual learning experiments are conducted to evaluate whether listeners generalize what they have learned about a previous talker's production of sibilants and stop VOT to…