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Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/22

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Author: search.filters.author.Lickley, RobinEnd date: 2019

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    Bulgarian vowel reduction in unstressed position: An ultrasound and acoustic investigation
    (International Phonetic Association, 2019-08-10) Dokovova, Marie; Sabev, Mitko; Scobbie, James M.; Lickley, Robin; Cowen, Steve; Calhoun, Sasha; Escudero, Paola; Tabain, Marija; Warren, Paul
    Vowel reduction in Contemporary Standard Bulgarian (CSB) has been variously claimed to involve raising, no change or lowering of the high vowels /iəu/. There is a general agreement that the low vowels /ɛaɔ/ are raised when unstressed. This paper directly measures tongue height using Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) and relates this measure to the acoustic correlate F1 at vowel midpoint. The six vowels of CSB were paired with respect to frontness (/ɛ, i/, /a, ə/, /ɔ, u/), and the overlap in height of the unstressed lower vowel in each pair was assessed relative to (a) its stressed counterpart and (b) the stressed and (c) unstressed realisations of the lower vowel. There was no evidence of the higher unstressed vowel in each pair being different from its stressed counterpart. The articulatory and acoustic results are not completely aligned, but both diverge from the traditional model of vowel reduction in CSB.
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    The effects of repetition and speech rate on recall accuracy in a discourse listening task
    (2017-08-18) Donahue, Jillian; Schoepfer, Christine; Lickley, Robin
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    The influence of anticipation of word misrecognition on the likelihood of stuttering
    (Elsevier, 2012-05) Brocklehurst, P. H.; Lickley, Robin; Corley, M.
    This study investigates whether the experience of stuttering can result from the speaker's anticipation of his words being misrecognized. Twelve adults who stutter (AWS) repeated single words into what appeared to be an automatic speech-recognition system. Following each iteration of each word, participants provided a self-rating of whether they stuttered on it and the computer then provided feedback implying its correct or incorrect recognition of it. Each word was repeated four times. Unbeknown to participants, 'Correct' and 'Incorrect' recognition of words by the system was pre-determined and bore no relation to the actual quality of participants' iterations of those words. For words uttered in the 'Correct recognition' condition, the likelihood of AWS self-reporting stuttering on a word diminished across iterations, whereas for words in the 'Incorrect recognition' condition it remained static. On the basis of the findings it is argued that: (a) in AWS, the anticipation that a word will be misrecognized increases the relative likelihood of stuttering on that word in the future; and (b) this effect is independent of the degree of difficulty inherent in the formulation and motor execution of the word itself, although it may interact with it. Mechanisms that can account for these findings and yet are also congruent with the wider range of evidence from psycholinguistic and speech motor control domains are discussed. It is concluded that stuttered disfluencies may best be explained as resulting from the inappropriate functioning of covert repair and/or variable release threshold mechanisms in response to the anticipation of communication failure. Learning outcomes: This article informs readers about two different theoretical approaches to explaining developmental stuttering: (1) stuttering as an adaptation response to an underlying impairment; and (2) stuttering as an anticipatory struggle response. It describes how these approaches account for different symptoms of the disorder, and proposes that both theoretical approaches are needed in order to fully account for the range of symptoms and experimental findings associated with stuttering. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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    Development of lingual motor control in children and adolescents
    (University of Glasgow: Glasgow, 2015-08-10) Zharkova, Natalia; Hardcastle, William J.; Gibbon, Fiona; Lickley, Robin
    An important insight into speech motor control development can be gained from analysing coarticulation. Despite a growing number of acoustic and articulatory studies of lingual coarticulation in children, there are conflicting opinions on how the extent of coarticulation changes during childhood. There is also increasing evidence that age-related patterns vary depending on speech sounds involved. The present study employed ultrasound tongue imaging to compare anticipatory V-on-C coarticulation in 13-year-old adolescents and 5-year-old children, using the consonants /p/ and /t/, which differ in the amount of lingual coarticulation in adult speech. For /p/, the two groups had a similar amount of coarticulation. For /t/, both groups had a vowel effect on the extent of tongue bunching, while only adolescents had an effect on the location of tongue bunching. Token-to-token variability in absolute tongue position was larger in the 5-year-olds. We discuss the findings in relation to previous studies and existing theories
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    Some stuttering treatments are 'possibly effective' for some people, but more rigorous trials are required
    (Psychology Press, 2007-12) Lickley, Robin
    The article discusses a study designed to determine how effective are behavioural, cognitive, and related approaches to stuttering therapy. The study was designed as a systematic review with trial-quality assessment. Included studies involved treatment of persistent developmental stuttering in any age group. Studies included had to focus on the efficacy, effectiveness, or outcomes of nonpharmacological interventions.
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    Fluency and Disfluency
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2015-06) Lickley, Robin; Redford, Melissa A.
    The word 'fluency' is used in many different ways and is a crucial aspect not only of typical speech but also of speech pathology and second language learning. To understand how speech can be produced fluently and what levels of production are important for fluent speech, it is important to consider what can go wrong in the processes that underlie speech production. To this end, this chapter considers how and why speech can become disfluent, referring to levels of processing in a standard model of production. Hesitation and errors can arise at any level of speech production from conceptualization, through syntactic and morpho-phonological encoding, to articulation. In all, it seems necessary to be able to talk about fluency (and therefore disfluency) on at least two levels: planning fluency (referring to smoothness of the internal processes) and surface fluency (referring to smoothness of overt speech).
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    Effects of the restriction of hand gestures on disfluency.
    (University of Gothenburg, Department of Linguistics, Gteborg, SUEDE (1970) (Revue), 2003) Finlayson, Sheena; Forrest, Victoria; Lickley, Robin; Beck, Janet M.
    This paper describes an experimental pilot study of disfluency and gesture rates in spontaneous speech where speakers perform a communication task in three conditions: hands free, one arm immobilized, both arms immobilized. Previous work suggests that the restriction of the ability to gesture can have an impact on the fluency of speech. In particular, it has been found that the inability to produce iconic gestures, which depict actions and objects, results in a higher rate of disfluency. Models of speech production account for this by suggesting that gesture and speech production are part of the same integrated system. Such models differ in their interpretation of the location of the gesture planning mechanism in relation to the speech model: some authors suggest that iconic gestures relate closely to lexical access, while others suggest that the link is located around the conceptualization stage. The findings of this study tentatively confirm that there is a relationship between gesture and fluency - overall, disfluency increases as gesture is restricted. But it remains unclear whether the disfluency is more related to lexical access than to conceptualization. Proposals for a larger study are suggested. The work is of interest to psycholinguists focusing on the integration of gesture into models of speech production and to Speech and Language Therapists who need to know about the impact that an impaired ability to produce gestures may have on communication.
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    Disfluency in typical and stuttered speech
    (Officinaventuno, 2017) Lickley, Robin; Bertini, Chiara; Celata, Chiara; Lenoci, Giovanna; Meluzzi, Chiara; Ricci, Irene
    This paper discusses what happens when things go wrong in the planning and execution of running speech, comparing disfluency in typical speech with pathological disfluency in stuttering. Spontaneous speech by typical speakers is rarely completely fluent. There are several reasons why fluency can break down in typical speech. Various studies suggest that we produce disfluencies at a rate of around 6 per 100 fluent words, so a significant proportion of our utterances are disfluent in some way. Stuttering can halt the flow of speech at a much higher rate than typical disfluency. While persons who stutter are also prone to the same kinds of disfluency as typical speakers, their impairment results in the production of other forms of disfluency that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from typical forms. In this paper, I give an overview of the causes of disfluency in both typical and stuttered speech and relate these causes to their articulatory and phonetic realisations. I show how typical and stuttered disfluencies differ in both their cause and their realisations.
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    Magnitude estimation of disfluency by stutterers and nonstutterers
    (Routledge, 2005-02) Russell, Melanie; Corley, Martin; Lickley, Robin; Bastiaanse, Roelien; Hartsuiker, Robert J.; Postma, Albert; Wijnen, Frank
    Everyone produces disfluencies when they speak spontaneously. However, whereas most disfluencies pass unnoticed, the repetitions, blocks and prolongations produced by stutterers can have a severely disruptive effect on communication. The causes of stuttering have proven hard to pin down - researchers differ widely in their views on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie it. The present chapter presents initial research which supports a view (Vasic and Wijnen, this volume) that places the emphasis firmly on the self-monitoring system, suggesting that stuttering may be a consequence of over-sensitivity to the types of minor speech error that we all make. Our study also allows us to ask whether the speech of people who stutter is perceived as qualitatively different from that of nonstutterers, when it is fluent and when it contains similar types of minor disfluencies. Our results suggest that for closely matched, naturally occurring segments of speech, listeners rate the speech of stutterers as more disfluent than that of nonstutterers.