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Jennifer S Pardo - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the montclair map task balance efficacy and efficiency in Conversational Interaction
Language and Speech, 2019Co-Authors: Jennifer S Pardo, Adelya Urmanche, Sherilyn Wilman, Jaclyn Wiener, Nicholas Mason, Keagan Francis, Hannah Gash, Alexa DeckerAbstract:This paper introduces a Conversational speech corpus collected during the completion of a map-matching task that is available for research purposes via the Montclair State University Digital Commons Data Repository. The Montclair Map Task is a new, role-neutral Conversational task that involves paired iconic maps with labeled landmarks and a path drawn from a start point, around various landmarks, to a finish mark. One advantage of this task-oriented corpus is the ability to derive independent objective measures of task performance for both members of a Conversational pair that can be related to aspects of communicative style. A total of 96 native English speakers completed the task in 16 same-sex female, 16 same-sex male, and 16 mixed-sex pairings. Conversations averaged 32 minutes in duration, yielding approximately 217,000 words. The transcription protocol delineates events such as speaking turns, inter-turn intervals, landmark phrases, fillers, pauses, overlaps, and backchannels, making this corpus a useful tool for investigating dynamics of Conversational Interaction. Analyses of communication efficacy and efficiency reveal that male pairs of talkers were less efficient than female and mixed-sex pairs with respect to partner map-matching task performance.
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a comparison of phonetic convergence in Conversational Interaction and speech shadowing
Journal of Phonetics, 2018Co-Authors: Jennifer S Pardo, Adelya Urmanche, Sherilyn Wilman, Jaclyn Wiener, Nicholas Mason, Keagan Francis, Melanie WardAbstract:Abstract Phonetic convergence is a form of variation in speech production in which a talker adopts aspects of another talker’s acoustic–phonetic repertoire. To date, this phenomenon has been investigated in non-interactive laboratory tasks extensively and in Conversational Interaction to a lesser degree. The present study directly compares phonetic convergence in Conversational Interaction and in a non-interactive speech shadowing task among a large set of talkers who completed both tasks, using a holistic AXB perceptual similarity measure. Phonetic convergence occurred in a new role-neutral Conversational task, exhibiting a subtle effect with high variability across talkers that is typical of findings reported in previous research. Conversational phonetic convergence did not differ by talker sex on average, but relationships between speech shadowing and Conversational convergence differed according to talker sex, with female talkers showing no consistency across settings in their relative levels of convergence and male talkers showing a modest relationship. These findings indicate that phonetic convergence is not directly compatible across different settings, and that phonetic convergence of female talkers in particular is sensitive to differences across different settings. Overall, patterns of acoustic–phonetic variation and convergence observed both within and between different settings of language use are inconsistent with accounts of automatic perception-production integration.
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on phonetic convergence during Conversational Interaction
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2006Co-Authors: Jennifer S PardoAbstract:Following research that found imitation in single-word shadowing, this study examines the degree to which interacting talkers increase similarity in phonetic repertoire during Conversational Interaction. Between-talker repetitions of the same lexical items produced in a Conversational task were examined for phonetic convergence by asking a separate set of listeners to detect similarity in pronunciation across items in a perceptual task. In general, a listener judged a repeated item spoken by one talker in the task to be more similar to a sample production spoken by the talker’s partner than corresponding pre- and postInteraction utterances. Both the role of a participant in the task and the sex of the pair of talkers affected the degree of convergence. These results suggest that talkers in Conversational settings are susceptible to phonetic convergence, which can mark nonlinguistic functions in social discourse and can form the basis for phenomena such as accent change and dialect formation.
S. Young - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Improving the speech recognition performance of beginners in spoken Conversational Interaction for language learning
9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, 2005Co-Authors: H Ye, S. YoungAbstract:The provision of automatic systems that can provide Conversational practice for beginners would make a valuable addition to existing aids for foreign language teaching. To achieve this goal, the SCILL (Spoken Conversational Interaction for Language Learning) project is developing a spoken dialogue system that is capable of maintaining interactive dialogues with non-native students in the target language. However, the effective realisation of the intelligent language understanding and dialogue management needed for such a system, requires robust recognition of poorly articulated non-native speech. This paper studies several popular techniques for robust acoustic modelling including HLDA, MAP and CMLLR on non-native speech data within a specific dialogue domain. In addition, a novel approach for using cross language speech data to adapt the acoustic models is described and shown to be useful when very limited non-native adaptation data is available. The experimental results provide a clear story of how to improve recognition performance on non-native speech for a specific task, and this will be of interest more generally for those developing multilingual spoken dialogue systems.
Alison Mackey - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Conversational Interaction in second language acquisition a series of empirical studies
2007Co-Authors: Alison MackeyAbstract:INTRODUCTION PART 1 PARTICIPANTS AND LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES IN Interaction PART 2 FEEDBACK, LEARNER-INTERNAL PROCESSES, AND PERCEPTIONS IN Interaction PART 3 InteractionAL FEEDBACK AND LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT EPILOGUE
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feedback noticing and instructed second language learning
Applied Linguistics, 2006Co-Authors: Alison MackeyAbstract:Second language acquisition researchers have claimed that feedback provided during Conversational Interaction facilitates second language (L2) acquisition. A number of experimental studies have supported this claim, connecting Interactional feedback with L2 development. Researchers have suggested that Interactional feedback is associated with L2 learning because it prompts learners to notice L2 forms. This study explores the relationships between feedback, instructed ESL learners’ noticing of L2 form during classroom Interactions and their subsequent L2 development. Interactional feedback was provided to learners in response to their production problems with questions, plurals, and past tense forms. Learners’ noticing was assessed through on-line learning journals, introspective comments while viewing classroom videotapes, and questionnaire responses. Through a controlled pre-test, post-test design, analyses of noticing and learning were carried out for each learner. The results point to an interesting, complex and positive relationship between Interactional feedback in the classroom, the learners’ reports about noticing and their learning of L2 question forms.
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communicative tasks Conversational Interaction and linguistic form an empirical study of thai
Foreign Language Annals, 2000Co-Authors: Kim Mcdonough, Alison MackeyAbstract:Second language acquisition (SLA) research suggests that some of the processes that occur during Conversational Interaction may facilitate second language learning. Carrying out communicative tasks designed to promote these processes can provide learners with the opportunity to focus on linguistic form in the context of meaning. Much of the SLA research on Conversational Interaction and communicative tasks has been carried out with the more commonly taught languages, such as English or Spanish. This article describes a series of communicative tasks designed for use by learners of Thai as a second or foreign language and reports on a study that tested the tasks' effectiveness at providing opportunities for learners to focus on linguistic form during Conversational Interaction. Finally, practical issues in the implementation of tasks in L2 classroom and research contexts are discussed.
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input Interaction and second language development an empirical study of question formation in esl
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1999Co-Authors: Alison MackeyAbstract:This study examines the relationship between different types of Conversational Interaction and SLA. Long's (1996) updated version of the Interactionist hypothesis claims that implicit negative feedback, which can be obtained through negotiated Interaction, facilitates SLA. Similar claims for the benefits of negotiation have been made by Pica (1994) and Gass (1997). Some support for the Interaction hypothesis has been provided by studies that have explored the effects of Interaction on production (Gass & Varonis, 1994), on lexical acquisition (Ellis, Tanaka, & Yamazaki, 1994), on the short-term outcomes of pushed output (see Swain, 1995), and for specific Interactional features such as recasts (Long, Inagaki, & Ortega, 1998; Mackey & Philp, 1998). However, other studies have not found effects for Interaction on grammatical development (Loschky, 1994). The central question addressed by the current study was: Can Conversational Interaction facilitate second language development? The study employed a pretest-posttest design. Adult ESL learners (N = 34) of varying L1 backgrounds were divided into four experimental groups and one control group. They took part in task-based Interaction. Research questions focused on the developmental outcomes of taking part in various types of Interaction. Active participation in Interaction and the developmental level of the learner were considered. Results of this study support claims concerning a link between Interaction and grammatical development and highlight the importance of active participation in the Interaction.
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Conversational Interaction and second language development recasts responses and red herrings
The Modern Language Journal, 1998Co-Authors: Alison Mackey, Jenefer PhilpAbstract:This article examines the effects of negotiated Interaction on the production and development of question forms in English as a second language (ESL). The study focused on one feature of Interaction, recasts, which have recently been the topic of Interactional work in the SLA literature (Long, 1996; Long, Inagaki, & Ortega, this issue; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Oliver, 1995). The study compared groups of learners who received Interactionally modified input with learners who received the same input containing intensive recasts in order to investigate: (a) the effect of recasts on learners' short term interlanguage (IL) development, and (b) the nature and content of learners' responses to recasts. The results suggest that for more advanced learners, Interaction with intensive recasts may be more beneficial than Interaction alone in facilitating an increase in production of targeted higher-level morphosyntactic forms. These positive developmental effects were found for recasts even though, as is generally acknowledged in the discourse, recasts were usually not repeated and rarely elicited modification by the learners. This study, therefore, suggests that recasts may be beneficial for short term IL development even though they are not incorporated in learners' immediate responses. In fact, the responses may be red herrings.
H Ye - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Improving the speech recognition performance of beginners in spoken Conversational Interaction for language learning
9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, 2005Co-Authors: H Ye, S. YoungAbstract:The provision of automatic systems that can provide Conversational practice for beginners would make a valuable addition to existing aids for foreign language teaching. To achieve this goal, the SCILL (Spoken Conversational Interaction for Language Learning) project is developing a spoken dialogue system that is capable of maintaining interactive dialogues with non-native students in the target language. However, the effective realisation of the intelligent language understanding and dialogue management needed for such a system, requires robust recognition of poorly articulated non-native speech. This paper studies several popular techniques for robust acoustic modelling including HLDA, MAP and CMLLR on non-native speech data within a specific dialogue domain. In addition, a novel approach for using cross language speech data to adapt the acoustic models is described and shown to be useful when very limited non-native adaptation data is available. The experimental results provide a clear story of how to improve recognition performance on non-native speech for a specific task, and this will be of interest more generally for those developing multilingual spoken dialogue systems.
Klaus Kessler - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Conversational Interaction in the scanner mentalizing during language processing as revealed by meg
Cerebral Cortex, 2015Co-Authors: Sara Bogels, Dale J Barr, Simon Garrod, Klaus KesslerAbstract:Humans are especially good at taking another’s perspective—representing what others might be thinking or experiencing. This “mentalizing” capacity is apparent in everyday human Interactions and conversations. We investigated its neural basis using magnetoencephalography. We focused on whether mentalizing was engaged spontaneously and routinely to understand an utterance’ sm eaning or largely ondemand, to restore “common ground” when expectations were violated. Participants conversed with 1 of 2 confederate speakers and established tacit agreements about objects’ names. In a subsequent “test” phase, some of these agreements were violated by either the same or a different speaker. Our analysis of the neural processing of test phase utterances revealed recruitment of neural circuits associated with language (temporal cortex), episodic memory (e.g., medial temporal lobe), and mentalizing (temporo-parietal junction and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Theta oscillations (3–7 Hz) were modulated most prominently, and we observed phase coupling between functionally distinct neural circuits. The episodic memory and language circuits were recruited in anticipation of upcoming referring expressions, suggesting that context-sensitive predictions were spontaneously generated. In contrast, the mentalizing areas were recruited on-demand, as a means for detecting and resolving perceived pragmatic anomalies, with little evidence they were activated to make partner-specific predictions about upcoming linguistic utterances.