PURPOSE Advances in neurobiology are providing new opportunities to investigate the neurological systems underlying motor speech control. This study explores the perceptual characteristics of the speech of three genotypes of spino-cerebellar ataxia (SCA) as manifest in four different speech tasks. METHODS Speech samples from 26 speakers with SCA were perceptually rated by experienced listener...

AbstractThe current study examined the modification devices (MDs) used by non-native speakers (NNSs) learning EFL during dyadic task-based interactions. Three meaning-oriented tasks, namely picture-description, spot-the-difference, and opinion-exchange, were used to elicit data from 24(12 male and 12 female, forming 4 male-male, 4 female-female, and 4 male-female dyads) Iranian EFL learners wit...

This article reports an experiment examining the extent to which younger and older speakers engage in audience design, the process of adapting one's speech for particular addresses. Through an initial card-matching task, pairs of younger adults and pairs of older adults established common ground for sets of picture cards. Subsequently, the same individuals worked separately on a computer-based ...

: This study aims to explore the relationship between syntactic and lexical complexity and also the relationship between different aspects of lexical complexity. To this end, speech monologs of 35 Iranian high-intermediate learners of English on three different tasks (i.e. argumentation, description, and narration) were analyzed for correlations between one measure of sy...

Focusing on applications for analyzing learner language which evaluate semantic appropriateness and accuracy, we collect data from a task which models some aspects of interaction, namely a picture description task (PDT). We parse responses to the PDT into dependency graphs with an an off-the-shelf parser, then use a decision tree to classify sentences into syntactic types and extract the logica...

This is an experimental study which aimed at investigating the ralationsship between working memory capacity and measures of L2 speech performance in a picture description task. The main assumption underlying the present study was that L2 speaking is a complex cognitive task which is carried out within the constraints of a limited-capacity system, namely, working memory. In this system, there a...

Knowledge Acquisition is an important task when developing image interpretation systems. Whereas in the past this task has been done by interviewing an expert, the current trend is to collect large data bases of images associated with expert description ( known as picture archiving systems). This makes it possible to use inductive machine learning techniques for knowledge acquisition of image i...

We investigate the influence of two processes on noun phrase production during a referential communication task: priming (co-ordination) and audience design (co-operation). Participants played a collaborative game that involved describing picture cards (Experiment 1) or wooden blocks (Experiment 2). They interacted with a confederate who was scripted to produce particular kinds of noun phrases....

In the present study, two different models of task complexity; namely, limited attentional capacity model and cognition hypothesis were examined. To this end, the manipulation of cognitive task complexity along +/- single task dimension on Iranian EFL learners’ production in terms of fluency was explored. Based on the results of the writing test of TOFEL (2004), 48 learners were selected as the...