Articulatory variability is reduced by repetition and predictability
Repeating the movements associated with activities such as drawing or sports typically leads to improvements in kinematic behavior: these movements become faster, smoother, and exhibit less variation. Likewise, practice has also been shown to lead to...
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Repeating the movements associated with activities such as drawing or sports typically leads to improvements in kinematic behavior: these movements become faster, smoother, and exhibit less variation. Likewise, practice has also been shown to lead to faster and smoother movement trajectories in speech articulation. However, little is known about its effect on articulatory variability. To address this, we investigate the extent to which repetition and predictability influence the articulation of the frequent German word “sie” [zi] (they). We find that articulatory variability is proportional to speaking rate and the duration of [zi], and that overall variability decreases as [zi] is repeated during the experiment. Lower variability is also observed as the conditional probability of [zi] increases, and the greatest reduction in variability occurs during the execution of the vocalic target of [i]. These results indicate that practice can produce observable differences in the articulation of even the most common gestures used in speech.
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Online comprehension of conditionals in context: A self-paced reading study on wenn (‘if’) versus nur wenn (‘only if’) in German
Comprehending conditional statements is fundamental for hypothetical reasoning about situations. However, the online comprehension of conditional statements containing different conditional connectives is still debated. We report two self-paced...
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Comprehending conditional statements is fundamental for hypothetical reasoning about situations. However, the online comprehension of conditional statements containing different conditional connectives is still debated. We report two self-paced reading experiments on German conditionals presenting the conditional connectives wenn (‘if’) and nur wenn (‘only if’) in identical discourse contexts. In Experiment 1, participants read a conditional sentence followed by the confirmed antecedent p and the confirmed or negated consequent q. The final, critical sentence was presented word by word and contained a positive or negative quantifier (ein/kein ‘one/no’). Reading times of the two quantifiers did not differ between the two conditional connectives. In Experiment 2, presenting a negated antecedent, reading times for the critical positive quantifier (ein) did not differ between conditional connectives, while reading times for the negative quantifier (kein) were shorter for nur wenn than for wenn. The results show that comprehenders form distinct predictions about discourse continuations due to differences in the lexical semantics of the tested conditional connectives, shedding light on the role of conditional connectives in the online interpretation of conditionals in general.
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Editorial: Variability in language predictions: assessing the influence of speaker, text and experimental method
Editorial on the research topic "Variability in language predictions: assessing the influence of speaker, text and experimental method".
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Editorial on the research topic "Variability in language predictions: assessing the influence of speaker, text and experimental method".
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