Prediction during Processing of Repairs in Spoken Language

口语修复处理过程中的预测

• 批准号: 1650888
• 负责人: Fernanda Ferreira
• 金额: $ 24.63万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-06-15 至 2021-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1650888&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Prediction; during; Processing; Repairs; Spoken

Everyone is familiar with the experience of being disfluent. Despite their best efforts, on average speakers will produce a filler such as "uh" or an "um" every twenty words, and they may also make a speech error which will need to be repaired. Previous research has established some of the causes of disfluency and has revealed that disfluencies of different types characterize different types of speakers; for example, individuals with ADHD are more likely to produce speech errors than to use fillers, and those without ADHD show the opposite pattern. Far less is known, however, about how listeners are able to understand speakers despite the presence of this noise in the linguistic signal. Early proposals tested the hypothesis that listeners must somehow ignore disfluencies, but more recent studies show that disfluencies are only partially suppressed, indicating that disfluencies affect how listeners interpret the sentence they hear and even how they evaluate the speaker. In addition, these newer experiments show that when listeners hear a word spoken in error, they use the error to predict what the speaker is likely to say instead. This prediction mechanism is helpful for two reasons: first, because it allows the listener to get a head start on processing the speaker's intended meaning; and second, because it helps the listener come up with a more sensible interpretation of the utterance should the speaker fail to detect and correct his or her error. Understanding how these prediction mechanisms operate is especially relevant for our understanding of language and aging; speakers are known to become more disfluent as they age, making their speech harder to understand. This is a pressing concern given the aging population of the United States. This work will also help enhance speech recognition devices that must be robust to disfluency if they are to operate on natural, spontaneous speech. Devices that respond to voice commands are now in millions of Americans' homes and pockets, and as they become more common, users will increasingly come to expect them to work smoothly and reliably. The experiments that will be conducted for this project use two complementary methods for assessing people's comprehension of speech on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis: recording of brain electrophysiological activity (EEG), and recording of eye movements to visual displays presented during listening tasks. The experiments are designed to answer three core questions about prediction during processing of disfluencies: (1) When do listeners begin to predict? (2) What precisely is the content of the prediction (a specific word, a general category)? (3) What is the fate of an incorrect prediction? That is, given that listeners' expectations will not always match the speaker's output, how do listeners reconcile their prediction with any discrepant content? This project will involve students who will be trained in experimental psycholinguistics, statistics, and computational methods, allowing them to gain experience in designing and interpreting data, as well as in preparing scientific reports for presentation and publication.

每个人都熟悉存在不变的经历。尽管他们尽了最大的努力，但总的来说，每二十个单词都会产生诸如“ uh”或“ UM”之类的填充物，他们也可能会遇到语音错误，需要修复。先前的研究已经建立了一些反思的原因，并揭示了不同类型的不同类型的不同类型的说话者的崩溃。例如，患有多动症的个体比使用填充物更有可能产生语音错误，而没有多动症的人则显示出相反的模式。然而，关于听众在语言信号中存在这种噪音，听众如何能够理解说话者。早期的提议检验了听众必须以某种方式忽略疏忽的假设，但是最近的研究表明，疏离只会被部分抑制，这表明疏忽会影响听众如何解释他们听到的句子，甚至如何评估说话者。此外，这些较新的实验表明，当听众听到错误说的单词时，他们会使用错误来预测说话者可能说的话。这种预测机制有两个原因有用：首先，因为它允许听众开始处理演讲者的预期含义；其次，因为如果说话者无法检测并纠正他或她的错误，它可以帮助听众提出对话语的更明智的解释。了解这些预测机制的运作方式与我们对语言和衰老的理解特别相关；众所周知，随着年龄的增长，演讲者变得更加不受欢迎，使他们的讲话更加难以理解。考虑到美国的老龄化，这是一个紧迫的问题。这项工作还将有助于增强语音识别设备，如果他们要在自然的自发言语上进行操作，则必须对这些设备进行稳健的识别设备。现在响应语音命令的设备现在有数百万美国人的房屋和口袋，随着它们变得越来越普遍，用户将越来越多地期望他们能够平稳而可靠地工作。该项目将进行的实验使用两种互补方法来评估人们对语音的理解，以毫秒的限制：记录脑电生理活动（EEG），并记录眼睛运动到听力任务期间显示的视觉显示。这些实验旨在回答有关在处理过程中预测的三个核心问题：（1）听众何时开始预测？ （2）预测的内容（一个特定的单词，一般类别）是什么？ （3）错误预测的命运是什么？也就是说，鉴于听众的期望并不总是与说话者的输出相匹配，听众如何将他们的预测与任何差异内容调和？该项目将涉及将接受实验性心理语言学，统计和计算方法培训的学生，从而使他们能够获得设计和解释数据的经验，以及为演示和出版的科学报告准备。

项目成果

What causes lingering misinterpretations of garden-path sentences: Incorrect syntactic representations or fallible memory processes?

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2021.104288
• 发表时间: 2021-09-16
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE
• 影响因子: 4.3
• 作者: Huang, Yujing;Ferreira, Fernanda
• 通讯作者: Ferreira, Fernanda

I see what you meant to say: Anticipating speech errors during online sentence processing.

我明白你的意思：预测在线句子处理过程中的语音错误。

• DOI: 10.1037/xge0000544
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
• 作者: Lowder, Matthew W.;Ferreira, Fernanda
• 通讯作者: Ferreira, Fernanda

The Problem of Comprehension in Psycholinguistics

• DOI: 10.1080/0163853x.2019.1591885
• 发表时间: 2019-10-03
• 期刊: DISCOURSE PROCESSES
• 影响因子: 2.2
• 作者: Ferreira, Fernanda;Yang, Zoe
• 通讯作者: Yang, Zoe

Good-enough language production.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.01.005
• 发表时间: 2022-04
• 期刊: Trends in cognitive sciences
• 影响因子: 19.9
• 作者: Goldberg AE;Ferreira F
• 通讯作者: Ferreira F

Misspoken words affect the perception and retrieval of intended words

说错的词会影响对本意词的感知和检索

• DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2020.1802052
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Cognition and Neuroscience
• 作者: Karimi, Hossein;Diaz, Michele;Ferreira, Fernanda
• 通讯作者: Ferreira, Fernanda