@article {501, title = {Poster: The influence of musical abilities on the processing of contrastive focus prosody in an L2: An eye-tracking study}, year = {2022}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {In Dutch and English, contrastive focus is marked by a pitch accent, and native listeners use this cue in perception to anticipate upcoming information (Mulders \& Szendr{\H o}i, 2016; Perdomo \& Kaan, 2021). However, eye-tracking evidence suggests Dutch adults have difficulty with using prosodic cues for anticipation in English (Ge et al., 2021), possibly due to small differences between Dutch and English focus cues and a higher demand on processing resources in L2 perception. Prosody perception abilities have been associated with individual differences in musical abilities (see Jansen et al., 2022). We investigated whether musical abilities influenced the processing of contrastive focus prosody by 45 Dutch adult L2 English users, using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm. Participants listened to sentences with the particle only, which associates with the direct or indirect object that receives a focus accent, e.g. I only gave a SPOON to the girl. I didn{\textquoteright}t give a FORK to the girl. Meanwhile, they viewed pictures showing objects and characters mentioned. We investigated to what extent participants anticipated the focus alternative (fork) in the second clause, indicating they had correctly interpreted the accented word (spoon) as the contrasted element. We analysed anticipatory fixations and tested the influence of musical abilities based on the Short-PROMS (Zentner \& Strauss, 2017). We hypothesised that L2 listeners with higher scores would show more anticipatory fixations on the focus alternative and fewer on the competitor image. Initial analyses using linear regression models support our hypotheses, indicating that individuals with stronger musical abilities show a faster interpretation of focus-marking pitch accents during L2 speech processing. These findings suggest that having stronger perceptual resources underlying both music and speech processing (e.g., Patel, 2011) can even influence prosody-to-meaning mapping in an L2. References Ge, H., Mulders, I., Kang, X., Chen, A., \& Yip, V. (2021). Processing focus in native and non-native speakers of English: An eye-tracking study in the visual world paradigm.~Applied Psycholinguistics,~42(4), 1057-1088. Jansen, N., Harding, E., Loerts, H., Ba{\c s}kent, D., \& Lowie, W. (2022). The relation between musical ability and sentence-level intonation perception: A meta-analysis comparing L1 and non-native listening. In~Proc. Speech Prosody 2022~(pp. 713-717). Mulders, I., \& Szendr{\H o}i, K. (2016). Early association of prosodic focus with alleen {\textquoteleft}only{\textquoteright}: Evidence from eye movements in the visual-world paradigm.~Frontiers in Psychology,~7, 150. Patel, A. D. (2011). Why would musical training benefit the neural encoding of speech? The OPERA hypothesis.~Frontiers in Psychology,~2, 142. Perdomo, M., \& Kaan, E. (2021). Prosodic cues in second-language speech processing: A visual world eye-tracking study. Second Language Research, 37(2), 349{\textendash}375.}, author = {Jansen, Nelleke and Loerts, Hanneke and Harding, Eleanor and Deniz Baskent and Wander Lowie} } @article {61, title = {Interacties tussen perceptie en motoriek in spraakontwikkelingsstoornissen: neurocomputationele modellering van gestoorde ontwikkeling}, year = {2013}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

Speech perception skills in cochlear-implant users are often measured with simple speech materials. In children, it is crucial to fully characterize linguistic development, and this requires more linguistically more meaningful materials. The authors propose using the comprehension of reflexives and pronouns, as these specific skills are acquired at different ages. According to the literature, normal-hearing children show adult-like comprehension of reflexives at age 5, while their comprehension of pronouns only reaches adult-like levels around age 10. To provide normative data, a group of younger children (5 to 8 yrs old), older children (10 and 11 yrs old), and adults were tested under conditions without or with spectral degradation, which simulated cochlear-implant speech transmission with four and eight channels. The results without degradation confirmed the different ages of acquisition of reflexives and pronouns. Adding spectral degradation reduced overall performance; however, it did not change the general pattern observed with non-degraded speech. This finding confirms that these linguistic milestones can also be measured with cochlear-implanted children, despite the reduced quality of sound transmission. Thus, the results of the study have implications for clinical practice, as they could contribute to setting realistic expectations and therapeutic goals for children who receive a cochlear implant.\ 

}, author = {Zheng Yen Ng and Deniz Baskent and Jacolien van Rij and Rolien Free and Petra Hendriks} } @article {91, title = {Restoration of interrupted speech: What does it teach us for top-down speech repair in hearing impaired?}, year = {2011}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

Inaudible parts of speech can be perceptually restored with the help of linguistic knowledge, context, and expectations. This top-down repair mechanism, phonemic restoration, is considered to enhance speech intelligibility in noisy environments. Hearing-impaired listeners and users of cochlear implants commonly complain about not understanding speech in noise. In our research, we observe that hearing impairment and front-end processing of hearing aids and cochlear implants may reduce the benefit from restoration. Based on this observation, we hypothesize that the degradations in the bottom-up speech signals due to the hearing impairment or signal processing may have a negative effect on the top-down repair mechanism, which could partially be responsible for the complaints by this population. We test this hypothesis in a number of studies with either control groups of normal hearing (with or without simulations of hearing impairment) or with hearing-impaired participants. In this talk, I will present results from these studies. Overall findings from our laboratory imply that the degradations in the bottom-up signals alone (such as in hearing impairment) may reduce the top-down restoration of speech, even in the absence of cognitive deficits.

}, author = {Deniz Baskent} }