This study aimed to isolate the conditions under which aversive stimulation is experienced as more or less discomforting/unpleasant. Discomfort was induced by playing loud noises through headphones while participants performed computer tasks. We employed 4 main conditions. Condition 1: the acceptance-based protocol (ACT), intended to integrate…

This study presents an efficient approach to personalized mispronunciation detection of Taiwanese-accented English. The main goal of this study was to detect frequently occurring mispronunciation patterns of Taiwanese-accented English instead of scoring English pronunciations directly. The proposed approach quickly identifies personalized…

Purpose: This project was conducted to characterize the noise exposure of adolescents living in rural and agricultural environments. Methods: From May to October, 25 adolescents ages 13 through 17, living either on a farm or a rural nonfarm, were enrolled in the study. Subjects received training on the correct operation and use of personal noise…

The architect for the Mauritius Auditorium project sat in his office at Larsen & Toubro's headquarters in Chennai, India, pondering the phone call he had just received from the vice president, Mr. K.P. Raghavan. The polyvalent hall of the conference center was about to be used to host its first rock concert in February 2005, but during a…

A primary focus within neuroimaging research on language comprehension is on the distribution of semantic knowledge in the brain. Studies have shown that the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LPMT), a region just anterior to area MT/V5, is important for the processing of complex action knowledge. It has also been found that motion verbs cause…

When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with signal instabilities such as sudden breaks, mispronunciations, interfering noises or reverberations potentially causing disruptions at the acoustic/phonetic interface and preventing efficient lexical access and semantic integration. The physiological…

The Internet has rarely been used in auditory perception studies due to concerns about standardisation and calibration across different systems and settings. However, not all auditory research is based on the investigation of fine-grained differences in auditory thresholds. Where meaningful "real-world" listening, for instance the…

Neural encoding of pitch in the auditory brainstem is known to be shaped by long-term experience with language or music, implying that early sensory processing is subject to experience-dependent neural plasticity. In language, pitch patterns consist of sequences of continuous, curvilinear contours; in music, pitch patterns consist of relatively…

Much of what we think we know about the performance of humor relies on our intuitions about prosody (e.g., "it's all about timing"); however, this has never been empirically tested. Thus, the central question addressed in this article is whether speakers mark punch lines in jokes prosodically and, if so, how. To answer this question,…

Purpose: To evaluate how perceptual importance of spectral tilt is altered when formant information is degraded by sensorineural hearing loss. Method: Eighteen listeners with mild to moderate hearing impairment (HI listeners) and 20-23 listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners) identified synthesized stimuli that varied in second formant…

Acoustics has received greater importance in the learning environment in recent years. In August 2000, The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) published the study "Classroom Acoustics: A Resource for Creating Learning Environments with Desirable Listening Conditions" providing a framework for understanding the qualities, descriptors of the…

Purpose: Current electrolarynx (EL) devices produce a mechanical speech quality that has been largely attributed to the lack of natural fundamental frequency (F0) variation. In order to improve the quality of EL speech, in the present study the authors aimed to develop and evaluate an automatic F0 control scheme, in which F0 was modulated based on…

Purpose: To determine the aerodynamic and acoustic effects due to a sudden change from chest to falsetto register or vice versa. It was hypothesized that the continuous change in subglottal pressure and flow rate alone (pressure-flow sweep [PFS]) can trigger a mode change in the canine larynx. Method: Ten canine larynges were each mounted over a…

The Modern Language Aptitude Test (Paper-and-Pencil Version, henceforth, the MLAT) measures "an individual's ability to learn a foreign language." It targets English-speaking adults (over Grade 9) who are literate. The test has only one form, which has not changed since it was first published by the Psychological Corporation in 1959. The test can…

Sixty-five Japanese learners of English participated in the current study, which investigated the acquisitional value of form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) on learners' pronunciation development. All students received a 4-hr FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the target feature of…