Melissa Michaud Baese-Berk

Languages differ in how they construct motion events. These crosslinguistic differences, referred to as framing typology, affect how speakers of different languages conceptualize motion events. Differences in event conceptualization may also transfer to the L2 (conceptual transfer), as shown from learners’ grammatical choices and their gestures. However, it is unclear whether L1-based conceptualization patterns can also extend to the acoustic domain of L2 speech production. Therefore, this study examined read speech from two spoken corpora of L2 English speakers whose L1s were of different framing typologies. English production from Korean and Turkish L1 speakers (V-framed) was compared to that of L1 German and L1 English speakers (S-framed). Various acoustic measurements of duration, pitch and intensity were extracted and analyzed. Results show no reliable acoustic differences between the two framing typologies, but rather show differences between native and non-native English speakers. Post hoc acoustic analyses further show how native and non-native English speakers differ. Our results suggest that speech production may be one modality where conceptual transfer of framing typology is not easily observable and that differences in L2 speech production can be best explained as resulting from articulatory differences between native and non-native speakers of the target language.

Bilingualism researchers have intensively studied how learning and using multiple languages affects all levels of linguistic structure. In this strand, examining diversity in the bilingual experience and the extent to which variables like language dominance regulate crosslinguistic interaction has been of special interest. However, most studies sample small groups of bilinguals from a single research site, creating a twofold generalizability problem. First, with small samples it is unlikely that researchers will be able to fully capture and quantify the range of variables known to affect findings. Second, when bilinguals are recruited from a single site, it is impossible to determine if findings are site-specific or apply to bilinguals more broadly. To address these issues, we propose a large(r)-scale, multisite approach to bilingualism research. We believe that such an approach, when informed by open science practices, has the potential to significantly advance the state of the art.

Phonetic imitation is known to be linguistically selective, but there are conflicting results around which factors constrain convergence: phonological contrast boundaries or perceptual salience and tendency towards clear speech. These constraints also have the potential to interact with the target of imitation, or what people are converging towards. Most laboratory shadowing studies are not designed to distinguish between competing targets of phonetic imitation, and one target is typically implicitly assumed. The present study examines phonetic imitation of English sibilants to disentangle the phonological and salience-based explanations of linguistic selectivity while explicitly testing whether participants converge towards raw acoustic or normalized imitative targets. Our results show no evidence of a phonological contrast constraint on phonetic imitation and are most aligned with convergence towards raw acoustic targets with more consistent imitation of model talker patterns that constitute clear speech.

Essentialist categorizations of language users, such as NATIVE SPEAKER, are widely used but lack empirical validity and reinforce social inequities. This article focuses on the NATIVENESS construct, critically examining how its centrality in social-scientific research distorts scholarly inquiry, introduces bias in educational and clinical assessments, and perpetuates exclusion in academia. We argue that such labels impose artificial homogeneity, devalue linguistic diversity, and contribute to systemic biases in society. By reifying social divisions, essentialist categorizations can exclude marginalized groups, perpetuate linguistic discrimination, and hinder scientific progress. We advocate for a shift away from essentialist proxies and toward more contextually grounded and empirically driven characterizations of language use. A reflexive and interdisciplinary approach is necessary to dismantle these harmful frameworks and promote more accurate, inclusive, and equitable research. Our argument is relevant not just to the cognitive sciences, but to any scholarship which involves describing or understanding language. Ultimately, rejecting essentialist assumptions will lead to more nuanced understandings of language, identity, and social belonging, fostering both scientific and societal transformation by promoting justice and accuracy across social-scientific disciplines.

Bilingualism researchers have intensively studied how learning and using multiple languagesaffects all levels of linguistic structure. In this strand, examining diversity in the bilingualexperience and the extent to which variables like language dominance regulate crosslinguisticinteraction has been of special interest. However, most studies sample small groups of bilingualsfrom a single research site, creating a twofold generalizability problem. First, with small samplesit is unlikely that researchers will be able to fully capture and quantify the range of variablesknown to affect findings. Second, when bilinguals are recruited from a single site, it isimpossible to determine if findings are site-specific or apply to bilinguals more broadly. Toaddress these issues, we propose a large(r)-scale, multisite approach to bilingualism research. Webelieve that such an approach, when informed by open science practices, has the potential tosignificantly advance the state of the art.

Under multi-talker listening conditions, listeners appear to rapidly accommodate variability in speaker productions. However, evidence indicates that this trial-to-trial accommodation incurs a processing cost and is amplified by accent differences among talkers. The present study investigated how individual listener differences in working memory capacity and attentional control may predict the degree of processing costs (as measured by response time and accuracy) incurred by trial-to-trial switches in English talkers of first language (L1) American accent and second language (L2) Mandarin Chinese accent. Listeners completed a dual-task experiment with a primary listening task and secondary non-linguistic task as well as measures of working memory capacity (the Word Auditory Recognition and Recall Measure) and attentional control (the Trail Making Test and a Stroop Test). Results indicated that, on trials with a talker switch, listeners with smaller working memory capacities were slower to respond to the secondary task and had poorer recognition accuracy for the primary task. The measures of attentional control did not predict switching costs, but Stroop test scores did interact with the accent manipulation such that listeners with better attentional control had better overall recognition accuracy for L2 accent. Working memory capacity, on the other hand, did not predict differences in recognition accuracy between the L1 and L2 accent conditions. We conclude that working memory plays a critical role in supporting rapid (trial-to-trial) talker accommodation. Attentional control appears to support processing of L2 accent more generally, but may not be critical for rapid accommodation.

Purpose: Numerous tasks have been developed to measure receptive vocabulary, many of which were designed to be administered in person with a trained researcher or clinician. The purpose of the current study is to compare a common, in-person test of vocabulary with other vocabulary assessments that can be self-administered. Method: Fifty-three participants completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) via online video call to mimic in-person administration, as well as four additional fully automated, self-administered measures of receptive vocabulary. Participants also completed three control tasks that do not measure receptive vocabulary. Results: Pearson correlations indicated moderate correlations among most of the receptive vocabulary measures (approximately r = .50–.70). As expected, the control tasks revealed only weak correlations to the vocabulary measures. However, subsets of items of the four self-administered measures of receptive vocabulary achieved high correlations with the PPVT ( r > .80). These subsets were found through a repeated resampling approach. Conclusions: Measures of receptive vocabulary differ in which items are included and in the assessment task (e.g., lexical decision, picture matching, synonym matching). The results of the current study suggest that several self-administered tasks are able to achieve high correlations with the PPVT when a subset of items are scored, rather than the full set of items. These data provide evidence that subsets of items on one behavioral assessment can more highly correlate to another measure. In practical terms, these data demonstrate that self-administered, automated measures of receptive vocabulary can be used as reasonable substitutes of at least one test (PPVT) that requires human interaction. That several of the fully automated measures resulted in high correlations with the PPVT suggests that different tasks could be selected depending on the needs of the researcher. It is important to note the aim was not to establish clinical relevance of these measures, but establish whether researchers could use an experimental task of receptive vocabulary that probes a similar construct to what is captured by the PPVT, and use these measures of individual differences.

Learning to perform a perceptual decision task is generally achieved through sessions of effortful practice with feedback. Here, we investigated how passive exposure to task-relevant stimuli, which is relatively effortless and does not require feedback, influences active learning. First, we trained mice in a sound-categorization task with various schedules combining passive exposure and active training. Mice that received passive exposure exhibited faster learning, regardless of whether this exposure occurred entirely before active training or was interleaved between active sessions. We next trained neural-network models with different architectures and learning rules to perform the task. Networks that use the statistical properties of stimuli to enhance separability of the data via unsupervised learning during passive exposure provided the best account of the behavioral observations. We further found that, during interleaved schedules, there is an increased alignment between weight updates from passive exposure and active training, such that a few interleaved sessions can be as effective as schedules with long periods of passive exposure before active training, consistent with our behavioral observations. These results provide key insights for the design of efficient training schedules that combine active learning and passive exposure in both natural and artificial systems.

This is the first manuscript from the ROLE Collective. Please visit our website to learn more about the collective https://rolecollective.github.io/

Silent pauses are a natural part of speech production and have consequences for speech perception. However, studies have shown mixed results regarding whether listeners process pauses in native and non-native speech similarly or differently. A possible explanation for these mixed results is that perceptual consequences of pauses differ depending on the type of processing that listeners engage in: a focus on the content/meaning of the speech versus style/form of the speech. Thus, the present study examines the effect of silent pauses of listeners’ perception of native and non-native speech in two different tasks: the perceived credibility and the perceived fluency of the speech. Specifically, we ask whether characteristics of silent pauses influence listeners’ perception differently for native versus non-native speech, and whether this pattern differs when listeners are rating the credibility versus the fluency of the speech. We find that while native speakers are rated as more fluent than non-native speakers, there is no evidence that native speakers are rated as more credible. Our findings suggest that the way a non-native accent and disfluency together impact speech perception differs depending on the type of processing that listeners are engaged in when listening to the speech.