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Psycholinguistics/Pidgins, Creoles, and Home Sign

Introduction
One of the challenges of studying language acquisition is that it is an internal process that is difficult to observe, especially when most of those who are actively acquiring language are infants and toddlers. To gain insight into the development of language, some researchers take advantage of exceptional situations in which language acquisition does not progress in a conventional way. Some examples of languages whose development is unconventional are pidgins, creoles, and homesign. Pidgins are language systems which develop when communication is needed between groups of people who do not share the same native language system. A pidgin becomes a creole when it becomes a language learned by the children of the next generation (when it has become a native language). Homesign refers to any gesture-based communication system ("signing") which is not a conventional sign language, commonly invented by deaf children who grow up with parents who are not fluent in a conventional sign language. All three of these language systems are alike in that they develop out of a need to communicate, express thought, and interact with other people in situations where there is no linguistic common ground. What does the development of these phenomena reflect about the processes used to acquire language?

Pidgins and Creoles
For the purposes of this chapter, and because the two phenomena are so closely intertwined, pidgins and creole languages will be a single topic of discussion. In actuality, a pidgin can be considered a stage in the development of a creole language. Pidgins are auxiliary languages which arise when people who speak different languages are brought together in a situation where communication is essential. Such situations have historically occurred at trade-posts or slave plantations, and were especially common during the colonization of new territories between the years 1500 and 1900. In their attempts to learn and use each other’s languages, communities began using a form of language that combined different components of their own native languages. The pidgin was learned by other members of the community and eventually passed on to their children. When the pidgin was learned as a generation’s native language, it became a creole language.

Classification
Pidgins and creoles are often classified in terms of their superstrate and substrate languages. The superstrate language is the language on which the pidgin or creole is primarily based, and is usually the language of the colonizing people. The substrate language (or languages) represents the language of the native peoples which contribute in some way to the structure or vocabulary of the pidgin or creole. Some examples of creoles and their superstrate and substrate languages are as follows:

Interestingly, creoles around the world share common features. Creole languages tend have a lack of verbal conjugations, generally place the auxiliary verb before the main verb, and have a subject-verb-object structure. This suggests that the development of creoles is driven by some internal mechanism which is shared by humans as species, regardless of specific language or culture. This possibilty will be explored in more detail later in this chapter.

Pidgins, Creoles, and Language Acquisition
Pidgins and creoles give researchers a rare opportunity to study language in its earliest stages, and to analyze how language develops as it matures. This provides a window of insight through which many researchers have looked for clues as to how humans acquire language. Two main theories of language acquisition (as it relates to pidgins and creoles) have arisen over the last half century:
 * 1) The relexification hypothesis, most rigorously defended by Claire Lefebvre and colleagues, which (among other postulates) compares the development of a creole language to the acquisition of a second language, and places creole genesis in the hands of adults in the community.
 * 2) The language bioprogram hypothesis, proposed by Derek Bickerton and colleagues, which uses pidgin and creole development as evidence for the innateness of humans’ ability to acquire language, and places creole genesis in the hands of children in the community.

The Relexification Hypothesis
Relexification can be described simply as lexical replacement: that is, the lexical items in a person’s first language become replaced by items borrowed from another language. In terms of creole genesis, the relexification hypothesis illustrates how superstrate and substrate languages come together to form a new creole language. According to Lefebvre’s theory, the superstrate language is the “lexifier” or the “target” language, and the substrate languages are the first languages of the people in the community where the creole is developing. Relexification occurs when the semantics and syntax of a lexical entry (i.e., word meaning and usage) from a person’s first language are transferred to a new phonetic string (i.e., a word in its phonetic form). The phonology of the superstrate language plus the semantics and syntax from the substrate language make up a new lexical entry in the creole language.

According to this hypothesis, relexification occurs for each substrate language in the community where the creole is developing. This means that speakers of one substrate language will have an early creole lexicon that varies slightly from the creole lexicon of others who speak a different substrate language. However, since these early creole lexicons share a common target language, they will share many common features. When early creole speakers start speaking to one another using their own relexified lexicons, they learn parts of other relexified lexicons and start levelling out the differences between them. Once this  levelling  is complete, the variation in the lexicons used by different speakers is greatly reduced, and the creole is considered to be a stabilized language. The stages in creole genesis according to the relexification/levelling hypothesis are illustrated below.

Some Criticisms of Relexification
Lefebvre has come under criticism for using relexification to compare creole genesis to the incomplete acquisition of a second language. According to this view, substrate language speakers are attempting to acquire the superstrate language but fail to do so – more specifically they successfully acquire the superstrate vocabulary but fall short of acquiring superstrate structure. However, as pointed out by Michel DeGraff in his review entitled “Relexification: A Re-evaluation”, there is little evidence that second language acquisition includes relexification. In his analysis of the errors made by English speakers learning French, and French speakers learning English, there was no evidence to support a relexification strategy in acquiring the second language; he did not find that English speakers used French vocabulary mapped onto English grammar and semantics, nor vice versa. For a complete, 95-page document of DeGraff's criticisms of relexification, see the references section at the end of this chapter.

Arguably the most major critique of the relexification hypothesis is that it asserts that only adults, with fully developed first language abilities, are able to contribute to the formation of a creole. As we will see in the next section, not all researchers agree with this view, and have presented some compelling evidence for the role children play in the development of creole languages.

The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
Based on his years of researching creole languages, Derek Bickerton has proposed what he terms “the language bioprogram hypothesis” of language acquisition. His hypothesis proposes that all members of the human race are born with an innate bioprogram for language that is capable of functioning even in the absence of consistent language input. He points out that the evolution of pidgins to creoles is similar across various linguistic backgrounds, and that this is unlikely to occur by chance, suggesting a genetically coded program for language specific to humans. For an in-depth explanation of the LBH, see Bickerton’s 1984 paper: “The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis”.

One of Bickerton’s more fascinating lines of evidence in support of his hypothesis comes from case studies in Hawaii. Hawaii is only location left on Earth where there are still surviving pidgin speakers as well as their subsequent generations of creole-speaking children, providing the unique opportunity to simultaneously study both a pidgin and its developed creole. To analyze the changes that occur when a pidgin becomes creolized, Bickerton studied the language produced by people who arrived in Hawaii between 1900 and 1920 (pidgin group), as well as the language spoken by the first generation of creole speakers (creole group). The language spoken by the pidgin group contained barely recognizable syntax, inconsistent strategies for marking tense (and other grammatical structures), and a heavy influence of the native language of the speaker. In contrast, the language produced by the creole group contained consistent grammatical structures and syntax which were absent from the pidgin spoken by the people from whom they received language input. The people in the creole group cannot have learned these language structures from the previous generation of pidgin speakers, lending evidence to the theory that children possess an innate ability to create an ordered language from “noisy” input (i.e., the language bioprogram hypothesis).

Home Sign
Deaf children born to hearing parents face a unique challenge when it comes to language acquisition: their parents are not often fluent in conventional sign language, and the children themselves, due to their inability to hear, cannot be exposed to conventional spoken language. When faced with this seemingly impenetrable barrier to language acquisition, many deaf children spontaneously generate a complicated system of gestures which they use to communicate. These gestures go beyond imitation, pantomime, and pointing to approach the level of a full-blown language, commonly referred to as “homesign”. Without any conventional language input, deaf children are able to create their own sign language which is structured both at the level of the sentence and the word (Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1998) and often exhibits complex grammar. The study of this phenomenon has led to some illuminating conclusions about the nature of language acquisition.

Classification
Researchers in this area have classified homesign gestures into four basic categories: deictic gestures, which make reference by pointing to some feature of the immediate environment; descriptive gestures, which imitate visual objects through pantomime; conventional gestures, which are used and understood by hearing individuals interacting with the homesigner (such as the well-known “thumbs up” meaning “good”); and markers, which are used to modify a string of gestures (such as a head shake to indicate negativity).

Homesign gestures differ from spontaneous gestures produced by hearing individuals in that they are structured and are produced independently of speech. Homesign gestures also differ from conventional sign language gestures in that they are developed over the lifespan of a single person and are used only by those in the homesigner’s immediate social circle. The latter quality also determines that homesign gestures are more iconic than conventional sign language gestures. Iconicity refers to the similarity of a sign’s form to the object or concept it represents; iconic signs are not arbitrary. Naïve, hearing signers tend to generate only iconic signs, while conventional signers rarely, if ever, use iconic signs. As illustrated by Kuschel’s case study of a deaf-mute named Kangobai,a homesigner’s use of iconic signs fall somewhere between these two extremes, most likely because homesign systems are not used extensively by those around them. This means that at times their signs must represent some key visual features of the referent in order to be deciphered by others.

Acquiring a Homesign
Children have been shown to be highly capable of acquiring sign languages, even in the absence of consistent sign language input. In 2004, Singleton and Newport documented the achievements of Simon, a seven-year-old deaf child whose parents were non-native American Sign Language (ASL) speakers. The parents’ production of ASL was inconsistent and full of morphological errors. Simon’s production of ASL, on the other hand, surpassed his parents’ and was comparable to ASL produced by children whose parents were native ASL speakers. Since Simon’s parents were his only exposure to ASL, his superior performance lends evidence to suggest that children possess an innate ability to acquire an orderly, rule-based language system even when language input is variable or inaccurate

Simon was able to reorganize and systemize irregular language input, but how is language developed without any language input at all, as seems to be the case with homesigns? Homesigns begin as single points and simple gestures, with one gesture form representing a single meaning. Eventually, homesigning children reorganize their gestures so that single components of each gesture (e.g., handshape, motion) represent components of a meaning (e.g., object class, action). As the children’s language abilities continue to develop, they produce longer strings of gestures and increase the number of prepositions expressed in a single sentence. Homesign grammatical structure tends to follow a patient-action pairing (e.g., signing CAT-PAT to ask permission to pat the cat), and this has been shown to be consistent across languages and cultures.

There is some evidence to the theory that home sign systems begin as imitations of gestural signs produced by the child’s parents. Spontaneous gestures are commonly produced by users of spoken language and often indicate individual events. For example, when talking about opening something with scissors, many people tend to move their first two fingers apart and then back together, like the “snip-snip” action of scissors. This is demonstrated in the figure to the left. Interestingly, this is also the ASL sign for the action of cutting. However, ASL users generalize and recombine this sign with others to represent other concepts involving the use of scissors, such as a haircut, whereas hearing individuals rarely use a scissor-like gesture when talking about a haircut. Similarly, deaf children with non-native ASL parents seem to produce signs similar to gestures used randomly and spontaneously by their parents, but they are able to generalize these gestures to new combinations and uses. Furthermore, a child’s home sign system contains many signs that are not produced in any form by their parents, indicating that imitation of gestures is perhaps the starting point for the development of a home sign system but is not a limiting factor in the formation of novel signs

Case Study: Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL)
In order to further explore what homesigns can reveal about language acquisition, we will review an interesting case of homesign-turned-sign-language in Nicaragua. In the history of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) we will see that homesigns are capable of exhibiting some of the core features of language, namely that they are discrete, multilayered and productive (for an overview of the core features of language, see Jay, 2003). We will also encounter evidence that some aspects of language generation are innate and independent of external input.

Prior to 1970, deaf children and adults in Nicaragua had little opportunity to interact with other deaf individuals. Some deaf children developed their own homesigns, but these systems were different from person to person and provided no common ground for communication. With the construction of a special education school in 1977 and another in 1981, the deaf were brought together as a community for the first time. The schools’ classes were taught in Spanish (without much success), but the students began using a common system of gestures to communicate with one another both in and outside the classroom (this creation of linguistic common ground is a striking parallel to the formation of pidgins). The gestural system soon expanded into an early form of sign language, and was passed on to the new generations of deaf students (much like a pidgin is learned by the next generation and so becomes a Creole). With each generation, the sign language system was refined and reorganized, and is now recognised as the official Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). At present day there are more than 800 deaf signers of NSL, and the language continues to develop. To see some great photos from Ann Senghas' work in Nicaragua, visit her Fieldwork page here.

The unique way in which NSL developed has allowed researchers to study the acquisition of language in innovative ways. By studying the NSL produced by three different generations of deaf Nicaraguan students, Ann Senghas and her colleagues have been able to describe the history and development of NSL, as well as postulate some of the factors affecting the acquisition of language. Firstly, the youngest NSL signers are the most fluent: changes in NSL grammar and morphology that occur with each new generation are passed on to future generations but not the previous ones. Secondly, NSL has progressed from a collection of simple gestures to a hierarchical language system with an infinite number of expressions. When Senghas asked first-generation NSL signers to describe complex motion events, such as wobbling down a street, they often represented manner and path simultaneously in their signs, for example by using their first two fingers to make a walking motion while moving the hand away from the body in a swerving pattern (as represented in box A of the figure to the right). This is similar to hearing Spanish speakers, who often produce co-speech gestures indicating manner and path of a motion simultaneously. However, second- and third-generation NSL signers tended to articulate manner and path separately, for example by making a circular sign to indicate a curved manner, then moving the hand away from the body to indicate a travelling motion (as represented by box B in the figure to the right). The segmentation of motion into discrete components of manner and path introduces a hierarchy that allows for infinite novel expressions, a defining factor of language.

These findings challenge the theory that language evolves through cultural transmission, and suggests that at least some aspects of language acquisition are innate. More specifically, it shows a childhood predisposition for the segmentation and subsequent linear sequencing of linguistic information. In the first generation, language was created without exposure to a pre-existing language structure. In the following generations, sequential combinations of components of the language occurred even when the input model was simultaneous and even though it is perfectly possible to use simultaneous signs. The progression of NSL with each new generation suggests an age effect with the ability to break down, analyze, and recombine language, and indeed this agrees with the previously reported pre-adolescent sensitive period for language acquisition.

Conclusion
The study of pidgins, creoles, and homesign gives researchers insight into the processes behind language acquisition. However, the data obtained from this research is almost purely observational, and is subject to different interpretations (as has been described above). Studies of pidgin and creole development have given rise to the relexification hypothesis for second language acquisition, and the language bioprogram hypothesis which asserts the innateness of language abilities. The study of homesign systems and NSL in particular supports the theory that language acquisition has a critical period, and that some parts of language can be considered innate. This active field of research will likely continue to turn out new and exciting hypotheses about language acquisition for years to come.

Learning Exercises

 * The following table contains examples phrases from some of the most common pidgin and creole languages. Also provided are the phrases translated into other conventional languages.

If you are interested in learning more about Hawai'ian pidgin/creole, the resources at Talking Story About Pidgin are extensive. You can watch videos, see photos of pidgin being used in the community, take pidgin grammar tests and more.
 * 1) For each creole phrase, try to identify the superstrate language and some possible substrate languages. Keep in mind that many pidgins and creoles are verbal languages only, and do not have a consistent written form. Most spellings of the following phrases are based on pronunciation.
 * 2) Once you have chosen a superstrate language and one or more substrate languages, to the best of your ability, use the relexification hypothesis to map the superstrate vocabulary onto the structure of the substrate language(s).
 * 3) What parts, if any, of the resulting sentences resemble the creole phrase you started with?
 * 4) If none of the sentences created through relexification resemble the creole phrase, perhaps reconsider your choice of superstrate and substrate languages
 * 5) If you are still confident in your original choices, explain why you chose these languages to be superstrate/substrate(s), and why you think relexification did not “work”.

 * Follow the hyperlink and watch Birth of a New Sign Language in Nicaragua, a clip from The Mind’s Big Bang episode of the documentary series Evolution. Pay close attention to the signs produced by Maria Noname and by the children in the second half of the clip.
 * a. For Maria and the boy featured at minute 5:19, try to identify at least one gesture from each homesign gesture category (deictic, descriptive, conventional, marker).
 * b. Compare the children’s use of NSL to Maria’s homesigning gestures. What makes NSL a full-blown language, while Maria’s homesign system is rudimentary?
 * c. From a language acquisition point of view, why do you think efforts to teach Nicaraguan children a conventional sign language failed?
 * d. Explain how this video clip (and the development of NSL in general) provided evidence for the innateness of language as well as highlighted the importance of linguistic input.

 * Follow the hyperlink and watch Forever Stamp: A Deaf ASL Story.
 * a. If you are a non-signer, which sign language makes the most “sense” to you, NSL or ASL? Explain.
 * b. How would you (as a naïve observer) identify NSL as a “younger” sign language than ASL?
 * c. If we were to travel 150 years into the future, how might we expect NSL to change as a language?

 * For the actions described in the following sentences, invent a sign to represent each component of the action (manner/path, manner/action) simultaneously, and a set of signs to represent each component of the action separately.
 * He hopped in a circle.
 * The pigeon flew up and away.
 * She copied notes very quickly.
 * The ball rolled down the hill.

 * 1) Which method of representation was easiest for you to invent, simultaneous or separate?
 * 2) Using your "separated" signs, recombine elements of the previous actions to describe the actions in the following sentences.
 * He hopped down the hill.
 * The pigeon flew very quickly.
 * She copied notes in a circle.
 * The ball rolled up and away.

(Try these out on your friends! Are they able to interpret what you are trying to say?  Is it easier for them to understand simultaneous or separated signs?)

 * For the following objects, come up with a representative hand sign. Invent an iconic sign as well as an abstract sign.
 * Apple
 * Cat
 * Flower
 * Heart
 * Doorknob

 * 1) Was it easier to come up with iconic or abstract signs?  Why do you think this is?
 * 2) Ask some friends to interpret your abstract and iconic signs. Why is iconicity important when signing to another person?
 * 3) Based on the information presented in this chapter, and your answers to the previous two questions, why do you think there is a shift in homesign systems from iconic signs to abstract signs as the homesign develops?
 * 4) Comment on the pros and cons of using iconic signs.


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title: User talk:Eml5526.s11.team5.vijay


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User talk:Margoschaefer

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User talk:Eml5526.s11.team3

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HW 1
 Formulation of Partial Differential Equation (PDE) for a 1- Dimensional Problem

--- Problem Statement

A bar is having a trapezoidal cross-section where the height and width is varying with distance along the x-axis.

a. Do the balancing of the forces acting on the cross-section and formulate the 1-D PDE for the problem.

b. Now if the bar has a rectangular cross-section where the breadth is constant, perform the balance of forces to formulate the 1-D PDE   for this case.

Use the same mass per unit length in the inertia force. Refer to meeting 6.1 for the figure.

Solution

a.

Consider an element of length $$d\left(x\right)$$ of the elastic bar, the free body diagram of the bar is shown as below.

In the above figure $$A\left(x\right)$$, $$ \sigma\left (x\right)$$ and  $$n\left(x\right)$$ represent the area, stress and normal to the plane on the left cross-section of the bar and

$$A\left(x+dx\right)$$, $$\sigma\left(x+dx\right)$$ and   $$n\left(x+dx\right)$$ represent the area, stress and normal to the plane on the right cross-section of the bar.

for the left cross-section $$n\left(x\right)=-1$$ and for the right cross-section $$n\left(x+dx\right)=1$$

by using newtons law of motion we can write    $$\sum(Forces)=mass*acceleration$$

by using newtons law for the element of the elastic bar shown we can write

$$ N(x+dx)-N(x)+f(x)dx= \rho A(x)dx\frac{\partial^2u }{\partial t^2} $$

where; $$N\left(x+dx\right)$$ is the net force due to the stress $$\sigma\left(x+dx\right)$$ which is given by

$$N\left(x+dx\right)=\sigma(x+dx)A(x+dx)n(x+dx)$$

and

$$N\left(x\right)$$ is the net force due to the stress $$\sigma\left(x\right)$$ which is given by $$N\left(x\right)=\sigma(x)A(x)n(x)$$

substituting for $$N\left(x+dx\right)$$,$$N\left(x\right)$$,$$n\left(x+dx\right)$$,$$n\left(x\right)$$, we get

$$ \sigma (x+dx)A(x+dx)-\sigma (x)A(x)+f(x,t)dx=\rho (x)A(x)dx\frac{\partial^2u }{\partial t^2} $$

dividing the above equation by $$d\left(x\right)$$, we get

$$ \frac{\sigma (x+dx)A(x+dx)-\sigma (x)A(x)}{dx}+f(x,t)=\rho (x)A(x)\frac{\partial^2u }{\partial t^2}.......(1) $$

Now if we take the limit of the above expression as $${dx\to0}$$, the first term on the left hand side reduces to $$ \frac{\partial (\sigma (x)A(x))}{\partial x} $$as we know that

$$ \lim_{dx\to0}\frac{f(x+dx)-f(x)}{dx}= \frac{\mathrm{d} f(x)}{\mathrm{d} x} $$

the second term on the left hand side remains the same as there is no $$d\left(x\right)$$ term. the right hand side also remains the same.

equation (1) reduces to $$ \frac{\partial (\sigma (x)A(x))}{\partial x} +f(x,t)=\rho (x)A(x)\frac{\partial^2u }{\partial t^2} $$

the stress $$ \sigma\left (x\right)$$ can be expressed in terms of elastic modulus $$ E\left (x\right)$$ and strain as                               $$\sigma (x)=E(x)\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}$$

Hence the PDE for 1 Dimensional elastic bar is $$\frac{\partial (E(x)A(x)\frac{\partial u}{\partial x})}{\partial x}+f(x,t)= \rho (x)A(x)\frac{\partial^2u }{\partial t^2}$$

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User talk:Egm6341.s11.team4.hylon

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Psycholinguistics/Aphasia Rehabilitation

Introduction
According to the National Aphasia Association, aphasia affects about one in 250 people in the USA and is more common than Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy. Considering the importance of communication in all aspects of life, getting help for a communication disorder is critical. Aphasia is an acquired disorder that usually occurs as a result of a stroke or other form of brain injury. In general terms it manifests itself in either an inability to produce or comprehend speech. The following article will outline the forms of therapy currently used today as well as discussing their efficacy for different types of aphasia.

Historical Glimpses
Aphasia rehabilitation therapy really became popular after World War II as a result of the large number of veterans returning home with brain injuries. Initially the strategy was impairment-based treatment. This involved treating the actual physical symptoms, meaning that they focused on trying to get the patient to speak again as much a possible. This type of therapy is most effective if done in intensive one on one sessions. Later, as the number of patients increased and the number of therapists decreased the focus switched to providing consequences based treatment. This method of treatment recognizes the significant affects of aphasia on a person’s life and teaches patients coping mechanisms to deal with these issues. This could be done in groups and required fewer therapists. Today speech language therapists have recognized the need for both the impairment-based and the consequences-based treatments.

The Focus Today
Today the approach towards aphasia rehabilitation is strongly influenced by the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disabilities and Health.

Figure 1 is a simplified version of the ICF similar to that seen in the book Aphasia Rehabilitation the Impairment and its Consequences by Martin, Thompson and Worrall. In general terms, this figure shows us how the affects of a given disability such as aphasia can be broken down into affects on the body, affects on participation in day to day activities and affects on the internal moral of the patient. Another external influence on aphasia rehabilitation today is the disability movement, which works towards promoting the acceptance of disabilities in society. The LPPA Project Group’s Life Participation Approach to Aphasia that was released in 2001 says that the primary focus of aphasia management should be life enhancement. Since those people with aphasia need to interact with their environment, it is important to not only work with the patient but also with those close to them in order to achieve the best quality of life. Aphasia rehabilitation today focuses on addressing these different areas and creating individual approaches based on personal goals.

Before beginning their treatment, patients are assessed using standardized tests such as the Western Aphasia Battery in order to determine the physical extent of their aphasia. The Western Aphasia Battery is a series of tests used to gauge the severity and extent of aphasia in adults. Speech language pathologists then communicate with the patient to determine what their personal goals are in the rehabilitation process. This is important because if for example the patient was never a great reader before acquiring aphasia, relearning that skill would not be as important him or her compared to someone who previously loved to read.

Prognosis and Time Course for Recovery
The prognosis for aphasia recovery depends on the individual case and as with many neurological injuries, early intervention is very important. There are two general phases for the recovery of language. The early phase lines up with the period known as the spontaneous recovery period which peaks at about one month after the onset of aphasia and then flattens out to a plateau six to twelve months post onset. This is the period where maximum language recovery occurs and is why early intervention is so crucial. The long-term recovery phase continues for the rest of the patient’s life, although the degree of recovery varies greatly between patients with some getting better and others worse. Pederson et al. found that the degree of severity of the initial aphasia was directly related to the time course of recovery. Specifically they found that 95% of patients with severe aphasia had recovered maximum function in ten weeks while those with mild aphasia reached that point in only two weeks.

Conversation Therapy
The goal of this therapy is to enhance conversational abilities. This means that it focuses on the ability to convey a message as well as the abilities of arguing, joke telling, gossiping and story telling. The sessions are usually one on one and really strive to boost the patient’s confidence.

Group Therapy
Group therapy has become an increasingly popular method of treatment. The focus of these sessions is to promote interactions between participants rather that working on discrete skills. Not only do patients get to practice their interactions but they get to meet other people in their situation. The sessions are monitored by a clinician who directs and promotes conversation.

Compensatory Strategies Training
The goal of this approach to aphasia intervention is to teach patients alternate methods of expressing themselves in real world settings. These include gestures, writing and the use of augmentative aids. It is again important with this approach that the family and friends are involved in the sessions so that everyone learns to be familiar with the strategies.

Schuell’s Stimulation Approach:
This approach falls under the category of a traditional approach because it focuses on the impairment. According to Hildred Schuell, aphasia is a deficit that spans all language modalities. If a patient shows a deficit in one of these modalities it is a result of an underlying language problem. In this approach it is believed that the auditory system is of crucial importance because of its key role in both the acquisition and ongoing processing of language. Treatment is therefore focused on only the auditory system rather than on each system separately because it is believed that improvements there will spread to the other channels since they are all connected. The approach uses a very controlled repetition of auditory stimuli. Although the emphasis of the method is on the input, it is very important that responses are given. Here are a few examples of the tasks that might appear: With this method it is important not to start with tasks that are too difficult. The starting point should be where the deficits begin to appear.
 * 1) Point-to Task: which is simply asking the patient to point to a specific object
 * 2) Yes-No Questions: asking questions like, “is Stephen Harper Prime Minister of Canada?”
 * 3) Reading Tasks: matching a word or sentence to a picture

Context Based Treatment:
This approach to rehabilitation also falls under the impairment-based category and can be very effective for patients with Wernicke’s aphasia. This method requires a great deal of flexibility on the part of the clinician because it is all about creating contexts that are applicable to the patient. Because patients with fluent aphasia are often unaware that their speech is being misunderstood or that they misunderstand speech, early intervention is very critical. For this treatment creating an appropriate context is very important; it is best to choose a context that the patient is familiar with so they will be able to anticipate what might be coming next. In a session, context can be established with the clinician’s opening question such as: “I would like to talk to you about your children” or it can be established with the use of a prop such as a magazine. Once a context is established the clinician begins to ask the patient questions, if the patient needs help they will manipulate the timing and linguistic stress on certain words. If the patient has difficulty inhibiting their word flow, they are instructed to try and listen to themselves and to stop whenever there is an error in order to promote an awareness of their own mistakes.

Because this is a very time consuming and intensive method of treatment, it is imperative to get the support of the patient’s caregivers because these exercises can easily be done at home.

Cognitive Neuropsychological Approach
This approach draws heavily on the use of models to understand how language processing works and where a particular aphasic patient has deficits.

Figure 2 is a schematic representation of the different stages of lexical processing. By looking at this diagram we can see that there are for example multiple routes to get to the “phonological output lexicon”, knowing this makes it more clear how a patient can be unable to understand the word apple from written cues and yet be able to read it aloud by sounding it out through the “letter-to-sound conversion pathway”. There are two basic principles behind cognitive neuropsychology. One is that everyone has the same cognitive processes and that brain damage does not result in new processes but merely alters which ones are used for certain tasks at certain levels. Speech language pathologists using this approach to aphasia rehabilitation must first determine which level of processing shows a deficit and then direct treatment towards improving that area or compensating for it.

The following is an example of a cognitive neuropsychological approach to treating a patient with impairments in lexical comprehension. The treatment was performed by Grayson and colleagues in 1997 and published in the “European Journal of Disorders of Communication”. The level of dysfunction was at the phonological and semantic stages of processing. The first part of the treatment addressed the semantic impairment and involved having the patient perform lexical tasks such as spoken or written word to picture matching. Example: Over the next few weeks of treatment they systematically increased the difficulty of the tasks. After four weeks the patient showed improvement in word to picture matching tasks but not in a phoneme discrimination task. However, when an extra four weeks of treatment were done with the addition of a phonological component to the semantic tasks the patient showed improvements in auditory word to picture tasks as well as a non-word phoneme discernment task.
 * Patient Hears: “a fruit”
 * Correct Response: Patient points to a picture of an apple

Computer Based Methods:
With all the advancements in computer technology today it is natural to see them implemented in a variety of clinical settings. With respect to aphasia rehabilitation, they can be implemented in a one of three manners. Either as the sole method of treatment, where the patient does the exercises alone and then has his or her performance reviewed later by a clinician. They can also be used to assist the clinician to present stimuli. There are also Augmentative Communication Devices, which are small portable computers that function as very advanced “pointing boards”. These ACDs use pictures, text, animation and digitized speech to help the aphasic patient communicate. One such program is the picture based “C-Speak Aphasia” which was developed by Nicholas and Elliot in 1998. In an experimental examination of the program’s efficacy, Nicolas et al. found that the majority of the patients studied were able to communicate better with the program. However, they highlighted the point that the degree to which the executive functioning skills were intact was a better determinate of the treatment’s success then the severity of the aphasia.

Although there is significant peer reviewed evidence supporting the use of computers in aphasia rehabilitation it is important to remember its limitations. These limitations include the fact that computers rely on pre-applied unchanging rules and that they cannot anticipate every possibility.

Pharmacotherapy:
In the early days, the studies looking as the use of drugs in aphasia treatment centered on barbiturates because it was thought that people with aphasia would speak better if they were relaxed. More recent studies with animals have shown that a pharmacologically induced increase in brain catecholamine levels increases the effects of practice. Specifically d-Amphetaime was found to be an effective agent in these studies. Although there have been human studies on the effects of d-Amphetamine they are very hard to interpret because the anatomical and functional definitions of aphasia differ between studies and even between patients within a study. Another issue is that since aphasia in many cases appears alongside other disorders requiring pharmacological treatment, it is difficult to select patients for studies. To generalize, pharmacotherapy does not have the potential to replace behavioural or cognitive therapies for aphasia rehabilitation although it does have the potential to be used alongside these treatments in some capacity.

Constraint Induced Language Therapy:
This method of treatment is very rigorous because it involves removing any coping mechanisms that the patient has developed such as gestures and pictures and only allows spoken communication. It essentially operates under the principle of “use it or lose it”. Sessions are usually intensive, three hours a day for ten days and implement the use of visual barriers between communication partners to prevent anything but verbal communication. Although this method of treatment has been proven effective, it is not recommended to be done at home because of the frustration it would cause for all parties involved.

Book Clubs:
In 1999 the California Aphasia Clinic started its trademark Book Connection program. The program was started as a result of feedback from aphasic patients who expressed that the loss of the ability to read for pleasure had decreased their quality of life. Because there are so many different degrees to which aphasia can affect a person’s ability to read, the Book Connection program uses a series of adaptations to break down a book to help people be able to read. Their packages, which are sold to groups across North America include a facilitators guide, chapter outlines, chapter highlights, chapter key points, character sketches, and audio files. The book club then meets once a week to discuss what they have read. Participants gain both the benefits of group therapy sessions and have the opportunity to read and enjoy popular fiction. In a seminar given at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in 2005, it was presented by Elman et al. that book club members need not be at the same level and that there is a benefit to having a variety of abilities so long as all are motivated. A clinician whose role can vary between groups monitors the sessions.

Intensive Therapy Program:
In 2002, the school of Human Communication Disorders at Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia developed their intensive InteRACT program for patients with aphasia. The program lasts for four and half weeks and requires that all participants have a communication partner and that they all live in the same residence building for the duration of the program. Having the participants live in the same residence building is very important to the success of the program because it allows the participants to learn from each other and to bond with people in similar situations. Participants receive four hours of individual therapy and one hour of group therapy per day for five days a week. In addition to this they all participate in a number of supplementary activities to enhance their treatment. Intensity has been proven very effective for aphasia treatment and the general message is go big or go home. For more information about this program see the InteRACT website.

Conclusion
What the above article has attempted to do is to give an overview of the history and current treatments of aphasia. It is clear that there is not one great treatment of aphasia that everyone can agree on. This is because every case is different and requires individual attention. However the consensus is that one should not stick to one method of treatment and that both individual and group therapies are important in achieving the goal of a better quality of life.

Questions for Consideration:

 * 1) From reading the above chapter on aphasia rehabilitation, does it make sense why there are so many different approaches towards aphasia rehabilitation? Explain your reasoning.
 * 2) Treatment programs like the InteRACT program mentioned in the chapter are great but they currently are not receiving enough government funding. Do you think that aphasia programs should get more recognition and support from the government? Keep in mind how much aphasia can affect daily functioning and how many people are affected by it.
 * 3) Given what you have read in the chapter, why do you think it is important to provide a patient with both impairment based and consequence based treatment?

Book Club Exercise
Create a chapter summary for a book of your choice, such as one might create for an aphasia book club. Take the first chapter of a book of your choice and:
 * 1) Create a point form chapter summary
 * 2) Make a list of the chapter highlights
 * 3) List all the characters who appear in that chapter
 * 4) Create two questions that will help direct the discussion on the chapter. Try and create ones that ask how the reader reacted personally to the chapter.

Sample Book Club Exercise:
Exercise

Aphasia Sites of Interest

 * York-Durham Aphasia Centre
 * California Aphasia Centre
 * National Aphasia Association
 * Toronto Aphasia Centre
 * Canadian Association of Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists
 * Academy of Aphasia
 * American Speech-Language-Hearing Association


text:
Psycholinguistics/Perception of Continuous Speech

Introduction

The perception of continuous speech is a complex and difficult process. And yet, we all do this daily. Whether we are listening to a friend’s funny story, or to a powerful political speech, we use the steps involved in understanding of the stream of language that allows us to communicate with others. Our ability to put together and understand continuous speech is what makes communication possible. Without being able to comprehend continuous speech, we would be unable to understand what others are expressing – we would be isolated. The perception of speech segments and continuous speech is a truly incredible feat of the human mind. Our perception of continuous speech is different from our perception of individual words, because it is affected by the individual words and phonemes. We can never really segment thoughts into different phonemes, because their property of invariance causes them to blend together. And yet, without being able to separate these individual words, people are able to understand a whole stream of these sounds that are almost unidentifiable in isolation, and make sense of them.

Consonant and Vowel Identification

Vowels and consonants are identified differently. When isolated, vowels have a long, steady quality. However, the sound of a vowel is strongly influenced by the sounds around it. Consonants cannot be perceived without an accompanying vowel, but they sound shorter and require less energy to produce. For example, a person cannot make the sound of a consonant (i.e., k) without expressing a vowel sound with it. Consonants have certain properties encoded – for example, an unvoiced consonant is encoded differently than a stop consonant. However, in continuous speech, the cues used to identify vowels rely on the transition between the vowels and the consonants. Strange, Edman, and Jenkins (1979) performed a study in which people tried to identify vowels in different conditions and pairings (i.e., paired with different types of consonants in different orders). They discovered that vowels are easiest to identify when they are paired with consonants. Vowels were best identified when they were bordered on either side by consonants, but the final consonant provided more identification information than the initial consonant (Strange, Edman & Jenkins, 1979). Thus, it appears that consonants need vowels to be perceived, and vowels need consonants to be perceived correctly.

When vowels and consonants are combined, there are many effects. One such effect is assimilation, in which the letters of words are slurred together in coarticulation. Assimilation occurs when the features of phonemes overlap when they are paired together. Combining consonants and vowels can result in the bidirectional effect, in which phonemes have an effect on each other in pronouncing words or phrases. Phonemes are pronounced differently in anticipation of the next phoneme or as a result of the previous phoneme. Coarticulation can only occur when there is both a vowel and a consonant present. In assimilation, in the phrase “Come on,” for example, it is impossible to hear exactly where the “m” sound stops, and the second “o” sound begins.

Epenthesis is another effect of the combinations of vowels and consonants in continuous speech. In this case, a letter or a syllable is inserted into the letter to make pronunciation easier. An example of this is how the word “warmth” often sounds like it contains a “p” towards the end of the word. This makes annunciation of the word easier in constant speech. The opposite case can also be true. In elision, a sound is omitted from the pronunciation of a word. For example, in the word “February,” the first “r” sound is often omitted.

Assimilation, epenthesis and elision allow us to speak and understand speech more rapidly. They are adaptations to the language to assist with the flow of pronunciation. These adjustments are also the reason we can understand a continuous flow of speech, but if individual sounds were isolated from that continuous flow, they would be incomprehensible. We use context and adjust to the speaker through normalization to be able to understand language, despite all the changes through assimilation, epenthesis, and elision.

Parallel Transmission
Essentially, parallel transmission is when syllables affect the pronunciation of one another. Coarticulation and the bidirectional effect (discussed above) are parts of parallel transmission. The existence of parallel transmission creates the segmentation problem – we cannot tell where one phoneme ends and the other begins. This causes a problem for theories of speech perception that are based around using the phoneme as the basic unit. Some critics say that if the lines between the phonemes are blurred, they are not really individual units. Because of this criticism, it has been argued that the syllable is a better basic unit of measurement for speech perception.

Contextual variance seems to support the view that phonemes are not unchanging, individual sounds. The concept suggests that, in reality, phonemes posses a quality of invariance. This quality allows the sound of the phoneme to change depending on the preceding or following sounds. Consonants, especially, have been found to be context dependent – their acoustic pattern is based on the vowel that comes after the consonant.

This segmentation problem and the problem with parallel transmission are especially apparent when automated speech recognition programs are involved. Because people adjust the annunciation of phonemes in anticipation of the next phoneme, phonemes do not always sound the same. This invariance makes it difficult for programs that have been set to identify the prototypical phoneme to detect variations of that phoneme. The effects of assimilation, epenthesis and elision are especially pronounced in automated speech recognition programs. While humans are able to understand sentences with these changes involved, an automated program may not recognize them, or misperceive the words. For example, people would know the difference between “come on,” and “common,” because there is a slight variation in the phonemes and the context would provide people with clues for interpretation. However, an automated program is likely to frequently confuse one statement for the other. Automated programs are most effective when they have been adjusted to one person’s voice for a few key words and phrases.

Voice onset time (VOT)

Voice onset time (VOT) is the time between the unvoiced consonant and the perception of the voiced vowel. VOT is often used in the identification process of segments in continuous speech. In other words, VOT is the time between the beginning of the pronunciation of the word and the onset of the vibration of the vocal chords. For example "pa" and "ba" are two different sounds but at 50 milliseconds and longer we perceive the sound "ba" and at 20 milliseconds and shorter we perceive the sound "pa". Surprisingly at 30 milliseconds we here "pa"/"ba" making it impossible to decide which sound it actually is.

In categorical perception, the length of VOTs is used to identify sounds. People hear sounds in different categories. Within phonemic categories, people are not very apt at discriminating between sounds. However, people are much better at discrimination between different phonemic categories. VOT and categorical perception allow people to distinguish between the sounds of different phonemes.

The understanding of these segments is affected by the comprehension of the language. English speakers are unable to understand where the segments of speech are divided in Spanish if they do not speak that language, but can identify the segments in English.

Phoneme Prototypes
The concept of prototypes entails people trying to fit different vowel sounds into their graded structure of what the phoneme is supposed to sound like under ideal conditions. People compare what they actually hear to what they know the phoneme should sound like. The magnitude of the difference between what the phoneme actually sounds like and what we expect it to sound like facilitates proper identification. It is easier to make the distinction between sounds that are farther away from the prototypical sound.

Pauses
Pauses are an important component of speech. Depending on their placement and their duration, they tell can indicate the importance and the salience of the semantic meaning of a statement. Political speeches are powerful examples of using pauses to hold an audience and place emphasis on certain statements. The link below is a short clip from President Kennedy’s famous inaugural speech. He uses pauses to show emphasis and create excitement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLdA1ikkoEc

However, pauses are not always intentional, and some must be filtered out or they will create confusion in the perception of continuous speech. Duez (1985) did a study on the perception of silent pauses in speech. She tested utterance boundary pauses (pauses between syntactically independent sequences), clause boundary pauses (pauses between clauses in the utterance), constituent boundary pauses (pauses between phrases), and within-constituent pauses (pauses between connected elements – i.e., a pronoun and an article). In her tests, she would use normal speech and inverted speech to test the difference in pause-perception. She found that in 70% of the cases, whether the speech was played normally or inverted, there was a similar perception of pauses. These results emphasize the role of prosodic features of speech, such as intonation, rhythm, and tone. She explains 30% variation through differences in semantic context. She explains that people are more likely to hear a pause when it is expected, but sometimes do not hear the pause if it is unexpected. Duez also determined that duration is positively correlated with the identification of pauses in speech (Duez, 1985).

Bottom-up vs. Top-down Processing
In bottom-up processing, people examine the sensory data and draw conclusions about what the sensory information means. In language, this means people hear the combination of phonemes and use that data to draw conclusions about which words are being produced. In top-down processing, the opposite happens. People think about what they expect to hear and, judging on the context, they fill in the blanks. Some researchers believe this phenomenon explains the phonemic restoration effect. The perception of continuous speech relies on the combination of bottom-up and top-down processing; people are able listen to the available cues and understand words as they fit with the context. The combination of processing allows us to rapidly understand continuous speech.

Phonemic Restoration

Phonemic restoration is the mind’s ability to fill in the missing phoneme based on the context that is presented. Warren and Warren (1970) designed an experiment to examine phonemic restoration. They had participants come into a lab and listen to a tape in which one phoneme was removed. They used a cough paired with the word “eel” and put it into situations where the context affected how the subjects interpreted the word. For example, when put into a sentence involving shoes, participants heard “heel” instead of a cough, and the word “eel,” (Warren &Warren, 1970). The following represent additional examples:

 * It was found that the (cough)eel was on the axle
 * (cough)eel was interpreted as “wheel”
 * It was found that the (cough)eel was on the shoe
 * (cough)eel was interpreted as “heel”
 * It was found that the (cough)eel was on the orange
 * (cough)eel was interpreted as “peel”
 * It was found that the (cough)eel was on the table
 * (cough)eel was interpreted as :meal”

There are two main theories regarding the process of how phonemic restoration works. The first theory is based on the sensory system. It states that the interaction between the top-down and bottom-up processing affect how the word is processed through the sensitivity effect. According to this theory, the acoustic information of a sound if affected by the context in which it is perceived. The second theory is based the cognitive representation of a word and incorporated the bias effect. In the bias effect, the top-down and bottom-up information are combined, but they do not interact as they do in the first theory. In this model, the output from the bottom-up processing system is biased by what a person is expecting via top-down processing.

Follow this link to engage in an example of phonemic restoration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJs24j3i8E

Gating Task

People often guess what a word will be before it is said aloud based on the context on the conversation. These predictions are more accurate when more phonemic information about the word is available. Grosjean (1980) created a task in which participants heard fragments of a word. Each fragment started at the beginning of the word and went a little longer in length. He found that there were three main points in understanding a word. The first is called the isolation point, in which the participant may be able to guess the word. The second point is called the uniqueness point, when the participant realizes there is only one word that could be correct. These two points do not necessarily yield the same word, but the idea about what the word could be is narrowed from a broad guess to a more informed evaluation. The last point is the recognition point, when the participant knows they have correctly identified the word (Grosjean, 1980). In everyday conversations, because conversations happen so quickly, there is very little time between the isolation, uniqueness and recognition point.

The Importance of Grammar

The grammar of a sentence can also strongly affect how people understand the semantics of the statement. In an experiment, Miller and Isard (1962) played white noise with sentences. They found that the words in syntactically correct sentences were easier to recognize. Participants were able to recognize grammatical sentences, such as “Accidents kill motorists on highways,” better than anomalous (but still grammatical) sentences, such as “Accidents carry honey between the house.” The participants were most unsuccessful at perceiving words in ungrammatical sentences played with white noise, such as “Around accidents country honey shoot,” (Miller & Isard, 1962). This supports the theory of top-down processing in that the context of the word clearly impacts people’s ability to understand it because they are expecting it.

Multimodal Perception
The perception of continuous speech clearly does not only rely on auditory input and acoustic representation, as demonstrated by phonemic restoration. However, cognitive input is not the only process that affects how sounds are interpreted; input from sensory systems can change how sounds are heard. Visual input (such a lip-reading and interpreting gestures or expressions)often helps us understand what people are saying. However, sometimes this input conflicts with the auditory input of a stimulus. In the McGurk effect, sometimes, although it sounds like someone is saying one word (i.e., “bah), when it is combined with the visual input of another word (i.e., “gah”) it can create the perception of a different sound altogether (i.e., “dah”). McGurk and MacDonald (1976) tried to explain this phenomenon by saying that “bah” has more acoustically in common with “dah” than with “gah.” Similarly, “gah” shares more visual similarities with “dah,” than with “bah.”  This creates a fused perception of the auditory and visual processing systems. Since “bah” and “gah” are not similar on acoustic or visual fields, the brain finds a middle ground – “dah,” (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976).

To illustrate this point, I have included a link to a video. Watch the following link three times – the first time, close your eyes and listen to the video; the second time, mute the video, and watch it; and the third time, watch the video with the sound on. The video uses a visual recording of a man saying “gah” and pairs it with the sound recording of a man saying “bah.” This creates the misperception of the word “dah.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8BVdJk

In an article written by Massaro (2001), he summarizes a number of studies he has performed over the years. He discusses the progression of how people see speech perception and how, although it was assumed to be unimodal, research has demonstrated its multimodal qualities. For example, in one study, he presented participants with an auditory, a visual, and a bimodal presentation of a phoneme. He found that people were more able to correctly identify the phonemes in the bimodal presentation than in the auditory or visual presentation. He also realized that the McGurk effect can be applied to more than just individual sounds. The auditory track of “My bab pop me poo brive,” paired with the visual stimulus of, “My gag kok me koo grive,” is understood as “My dad taught me to drive,” (Massaro, 2001). By using the McGurk effect of individual phonemes, entire strings of nonsense words can be integrated into a meaningful sentence.

Green and Kuhl (1991) examined the effects that place and voicing have on the perception of continuous speech. Their research supports the theory behind the McGurk effect. They concluded that the way people classify placing and voicing is not only based on the auditory system. They suggest that either visual processes wither work in parallel with auditory processes, or are integrated into the auditory mechanisms (Green & Kuhl, 1991).

Normalization

When listening to a person speak, people are able to understand what they are saying even if they have an accent or speak very quickly. This is possible because the brain engages in normalization. There are two main forms of normalization in regards to perception of continuous speech. The first is the voice tract normalization, in which a person adjusts to a speaker. Instead of trying to match up what a person is saying to the prototypical phonemes, the listener is able to compare it to the ratio of formants.

Speech rate normalization is another adaptive process that allows us to adjust to the speed at which someone speaks. Rate normalization is defined as a decrease in VOT that corresponds with an increase in utterance rate. In a series of experiments, Diehl, Souther and Convis (1980) determined that a listener’s ability to normalize to speech rate was greatly affected by the gender of the speaker. They found that, overall, people are able to normalize to male voice, but have significantly more difficulty normalizing to a female voice. In fact, the female voice seemed to have the opposite effect. Through experimentation, they found that there are certain conditions in which the gender effect can be neutralized, including adjustments in pitch and vocal-tract size (Diehl, Souther & Convis, 1980).

In more recent years, research in voice tract length normalization and speech rate normalization has been used in the development of technology for automatic speech recognition. In experiments conducted by Pfau, Faltlhauser and Ruske (2001), researchers calculated an optimal warping factor to determine normalized feature vectors, which were used to aid the comprehension of automatic continuous speech. They found that by applying these vectors and using normalization, under ideal conditions, there could be up to a 17% reduction in word error rate (Pfau, Faltlhauser &Ruske, 2001). These findings may indicate that there is a way to train automated speech recognition programs to a specific voice, and to recognize the changes in speech (assimilation through coarticulation and parallel transmission, epenthesis, and elision), for a more accurate perception of continuous speech.

Learning Exercise
This Wikiversity Learning Exercise is designed to help you connect the concepts in this article to the real world. The first four questions are based on the text, but they require critical thinking of the subject matter, including drawing on your own experience and providing examples. The other questions are related to the video links.

1.	Explain the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing. State which processing system is more useful in the following situations, and why.
 * a.	When listening to someone with a strong accent
 * b.	When listening to someone who speak very quickly
 * c.	When listening to someone discuss a subject you are not familiar with (hint: familiarity affects the context)

2.	There are two theories about how phonemic restoration works. Which do you agree with and why? Support your argument with information in this article.

3.	The three critical stages of word identification (isolation, uniqueness and recognition) allow people to predict what the word might be before it is said.
 * a.	Using an example, explain how each stage can yield different words as the listener gains more information.
 * b.	Explain how the gating task relates to top-down processing.

4.	Explain the importance of normalization in regards to evolution. Diehl, Souther and Convis (1980) found that people are able to normalize to male voices more easily than to female voices. Provide a reasonable explanation for the gender difference in normalization, and explain how Diehl, Souther and Convis (1980) were able to neutralize the gender difference in this study.

The perception of continuous speech is very different from the perception of individual words or phonemes. I created the following video to demonstrate the difference of how words sound in the context of continuous speech compared to when they are isolated. Watch the following video and try to pick out the first three words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwWbzgm0ySA

5.	Were the words easier to understand individually or in context? Using this video as an example, explain the importance of context in regards to the perception of continuous speech. In your answer, mention the effects top-down processing and parallel transmission have on the understanding of isolated words in continuous speech.

This video explains the usefulness of phonemic restoration in everyday life. Watch the following video and then answer the questions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k74KCfSDCn8

6.	Rate the level of difficulty of understanding for each situation
 * a.	Gaps in the statement were filled with silence at the beginning of the test (prior to hearing the gaps filled with noise)
 * b.	Gaps in the statement were filled with noise
 * c.	Gaps in the statement were filled with silence at the end of the test (after hearing the gaps filled with noise)

7.	Why was it more difficult to understand the sentence in situation 6a than in situation 6c?

I edited the soundtrack from the 2001 movie, “Snatch,” to take out any offensive language. In the movie, one of the characters is notoriously difficult to understand. Please follow these steps to learn about how expectancy and top-down processing can affect understanding:

8.	Watch the clip and listen to the dialogue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSiBwuNA_Nc

9.	Read the following section of the script from the movie, “Snatch”

 * Narrator: There was a problem with pikeys or gypsies.
 * Mickey: What're you doing? Get out of the way, man.
 * Narrator: You can't understand what's being said.
 * Mickey: You Tommy? Come about the caravan? Call me Mickey.
 * Narrator: Not Irish, not English.
 * Tommy: How are you?
 * Mickey: Weather's been kind, but it's harsh, to be honest.
 * Narrator: It's just, well, it's just Pikey.
 * Mickey: Would you look at the size of him? How big are you? Kids, how big is he?
 * Kids: Big man, that's for sure.
 * Mickey: Hey, Mam, come and look at the size of this fella. Bet you box a little, can't you, sir? You look like a boxer.
 * Mickey’s Mom: Get out of the way. See if they'd like a drink.
 * Tommy: I could murder one.
 * Mickey’s Mom: Be no murdering done around here, I don't mind telling you.
 * Mickey: Get your hands out of there, you cheeky little boy. Cup of tea for the big fella?
 * Mickey’s Mom: Don't be silly, Mickey. Offer the man a proper drink, boy.

10.	Watch it again.

11.	Explain how expectations and top-down processing affected your perception of speech in this sound clip.