@article {47, title = {Individual predictors of articulatory precision in sibilant production across the adult life span}, year = {2014}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

Whereas there has been a considerable amount of research on cognitive predictors for language comprehension ability, very little is known about individual differences in spoken language production. While links have been found between individuals{\textquoteright} production patterns and their perceptual category boundaries, it is unclear whether and how cognitive and linguistic abilities affect articulatory precision.

This study investigates articulatory precision in a large sample (n=100) of younger, middle-aged and older Dutch adults as indexed by center of gravity measures (spectral moments) for word-initial sibilants ([ʃ], [s]). The research question is whether individuals{\textquoteright} production precision is related to measures of a test battery (e.g., hearing acuity, memory, processing speed, vocabulary) and/or to speech perception performance quantified as performance in a preceding listening study. We also investigate effects of age, sex, education level and regional variation on articulatory precision and include speech rate effects in our statistical modelling. Participants were asked to read aloud a carrier sentence containing target words starting with either [ʃ] or [s] followed by one of five different vowels. Analyses are based on differences in center of gravity measures for the two sibilants as well as on centroid distance measures for the vowel contexts. Results will be discussed.

}, author = {Xaver Koch and Esther Janse} } @article {61, title = {Stemeigenschappen van Nederlandse kinderen met een cochleair implantaat}, year = {2013}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

This study investigates speech perception performance in younger and older adults as a function of naturally varying speech rate in conversational speech. In contrast to related research, the present study uses conversational corpus materials, with a natural variation in speech rate, rather than lab-recorded and subsequently artificially time-manipulated stimuli. We set up an eye-tracking study in which participants had to click which of four words on a visual display they detected in a conversation. The research question was whether older adults would be more affected by increased speech rate than younger adults and which auditory, cognitive and linguistic individual listener characteristics would predict the impact of increased speech rate on speech processing. Analysis of the click RTs and the gaze proportions shows that increased speech rate makes sentence processing more difficult for both younger and older listeners. In line with previous results, both hearing level and processing speed are predictors for perception performance in the older adults. In contrast to earlier findings, however, younger adults are more affected by increased speech rates than older adults. Analyses of the gaze proportion data suggest that this discrepancy may relate to different task related strategies for the two age groups. The data also suggest that individual characteristics, rather than age, predict speech processing differences at speech rates encountered in everyday conversational situations.\ 

}, author = {Xaver Koch and Esther Janse} }