Does the speaker's voice quality influence children's performance on a language comprehension test?

Åhlander, Viveka Lyberg; Haake, Magnus; Brännström, Jonas; Schötz, Susanne; Sahlén, Birgitta

doi:10.3109/17549507.2014.898098

Cited by 57 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Children ages 8–11 years performed better on language comprehension measures after hearing passages read by a normal human voice than when the passages were read by a dysphonic voice (Morton et al, 2001; Rogerson and Dodd, 2005; Lyberg-Åhlander et al, 2015). These studies suggest that vocal impairment can be detrimental to children’s speech processing, and may force children to allocate processing to the voice signal at the expense of comprehension.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flat vs. Expressive Storytelling: Young Children’s Learning and Retention of a Social Robot’s Narrative

Westlund

Jeong

Park

et al. 2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Prior research with preschool children has established that dialogic or active book reading is an effective method for expanding young children’s vocabulary. In this exploratory study, we asked whether similar benefits are observed when a robot engages in dialogic reading with preschoolers. Given the established effectiveness of active reading, we also asked whether this effectiveness was critically dependent on the expressive characteristics of the robot. For approximately half the children, the robot’s active reading was expressive; the robot’s voice included a wide range of intonation and emotion (Expressive). For the remaining children, the robot read and conversed with a flat voice, which sounded similar to a classic text-to-speech engine and had little dynamic range (Flat). The robot’s movements were kept constant across conditions. We performed a verification study using Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) to confirm that the Expressive robot was viewed as significantly more expressive, more emotional, and less passive than the Flat robot. We invited 45 preschoolers with an average age of 5 years who were either English Language Learners (ELL), bilingual, or native English speakers to engage in the reading task with the robot. The robot narrated a story from a picture book, using active reading techniques and including a set of target vocabulary words in the narration. Children were post-tested on the vocabulary words and were also asked to retell the story to a puppet. A subset of 34 children performed a second story retelling 4–6 weeks later. Children reported liking and learning from the robot a similar amount in the Expressive and Flat conditions. However, as compared to children in the Flat condition, children in the Expressive condition were more concentrated and engaged as indexed by their facial expressions; they emulated the robot’s story more in their story retells; and they told longer stories during their delayed retelling. Furthermore, children who responded to the robot’s active reading questions were more likely to correctly identify the target vocabulary words in the Expressive condition than in the Flat condition. Taken together, these results suggest that children may benefit more from the expressive robot than from the flat robot.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flat vs. Expressive Storytelling: Young Children’s Learning and Retention of a Social Robot’s Narrative

Westlund

Jeong

Park

et al. 2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Spoken language processing refers to a listener's ability to process acoustic information and map it onto linguistic representations which can then be manipulated and memorized to allow the understanding of speech [5]. Research suggests that listening to impaired voice may impede spoken language processing at different stages ranging from low-level speech perception to high-level listening comprehension [1][2][3][4][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. This may be due to the increased noise components characterizing dysphonic voices [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the educational context, past studies repeatedly addressed the question whether children are still able to listen effectively and recall oral information if their teacher is dysphonic [1][2][3]7]. Effects of normal versus impaired voice on children's spoken language processing have been investigated in sentence-picture matching tasks [3,11], passage comprehension tasks [1,2,4,6,7,9,10], and phoneme discrimination tasks [1]. To date, there is no consensus on how dysphonic voice samples should best be obtained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Imitating dysphonic voice: a suitable technique to create speech stimuli for spoken language processing tasks?

Schiller

Remacle

Morsomme

2019

Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology

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The aim of this study was to assess the suitability of imitated dysphonic voice samples for their application in listening tasks investigating the impact of speakers' voice quality on spoken language processing. Methods: A female voice expert recorded speech samples (sustained vowels and connected speech) in her normal voice and while imitating a dysphonic voice. Voice characteristics, authenticity, and consistency of the two voice qualities were evaluated by means of acoustic measurements (Acoustic Voice Quality Index [AVQI], jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio [HNR]) and perceptual evaluation (GRBAS scale, consistency, and authenticity rated by five speech-language pathologists). Results: Based on acoustic and perceptual assessments, the degree of voice impairment for the imitated dysphonic voice was found to be moderate to severe. Roughness and asthenia were the predominant perceptual features. The perceptual rating indicated a high consistency and acceptable authenticity of the imitated dysphonic voice. Conclusions: Results suggest that an imitation of dysphonic voice quality may resemble the voice characteristics typically found in dysphonic patients. Implications: The voice samples validated here shall be applied in future listening tasks and may promote our understanding of how dysphonic speech is processed.

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“…Voice symptoms and poor voice quality complicate teaching and may oblige a teacher to take sick leave [5, 6]. Furthermore, pupils react to a teacher’s dysphonic voice, which may have a detrimental effect on their academic performance [7]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship between Activity Noise, Voice Parameters, and Voice Symptoms among Female Teachers

Pirilä

Ansamaa

et al. 2017

Folia Phoniatr Logop

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Objective: Our interest was in how teachers’ voices behave during the delivery of lessons in core subjects (e.g., mathematics, science, etc.). We sought to evaluate the relationship between voice sound pressure level (SPL), vocal fundamental frequency (F₀), voice symptoms, activity noise, and differences therein during the first and the last lessons in core subjects of the day. Patients and Methods: The participants were 24 female elementary school teachers. Voice symptoms were evaluated by questionnaire. The data were recorded on 2 portable voice accumulators (VoxLog) from the first and last lessons of the day. The versions of accumulators differed by frequency weighting; therefore, the analysis and the results of noise and voice SPL were treated separately: unweighted (group 1) and A-weighted (group 2). Results: Difference in voice SPL followed difference in activity noise. F₀ increased between the first and last lessons. Correlations were found between differences in the noise and the voice symptoms of tiredness and dryness. Irritating mucus was associated with high F₀ during the first lesson. Conclusion: An apparent increase in voice loading due to the activity noise was observed during lessons in core subjects. Collaboration between specialists in voice and acoustics and teachers and pupils is needed to reduce this voice loading.

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Does the speaker's voice quality influence children's performance on a language comprehension test?

Abstract: Findings suggest that a dysphonic speaker's voice may force the child to allocate capacity to the processing of the voice signal at the expense of comprehension. The findings have implications for clinical and research settings where standardized language tests are used.

Cited by 57 publications

References 24 publications

Flat vs. Expressive Storytelling: Young Children’s Learning and Retention of a Social Robot’s Narrative

Flat vs. Expressive Storytelling: Young Children’s Learning and Retention of a Social Robot’s Narrative

Imitating dysphonic voice: a suitable technique to create speech stimuli for spoken language processing tasks?

Relationship between Activity Noise, Voice Parameters, and Voice Symptoms among Female Teachers

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