Conversational Speech Behaviors Are Context Dependent

PURPOSE

According to the interpersonal synergy model of spoken dialogue, interlocutors modify their communicative behaviors to meet the contextual demands of a given conversation. Although a growing body of research supports this postulation for linguistic behaviors (e.g., semantics, syntax), little is understood about how this model applies to speech behaviors (e.g., speech rate, pitch). The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that interlocutors adjust their speech behaviors across different conversational tasks with different conversational goals.

METHOD

In this study, 28 participants each engaged in two different types of conversations (i.e., relational and informational) with two partners (i.e., Partner 1 and Partner 2), yielding a total of 112 conversations. We compared six acoustic measures of participant speech behavior across conversational task and partner.

RESULTS

Linear mixed-effects models demonstrated significant differences between speech feature measures in informational and relational conversations. Furthermore, these findings were generally robust across conversations with different partners.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest that contextual demands influence speech behaviors. These findings provide empirical support for the interpersonal synergy model and highlight important considerations for assessing speech behaviors in individuals with communication disorders.

Lexical Alignment is Pervasive Across Contexts in Non-WEIRD Adult-Child Interactions

Lexical alignment, a communication phenomenon where conversational partners adapt their word choices to become more similar, plays an important role in the development of language and social communication skills. While this has been studied extensively in the conversations of preschool-aged children and their parents in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) communities, research in other pediatric populations is sparse. This study makes significant expansions on the existing literature by focusing on alignment in naturalistic conversations of school-aged children from a non-WEIRD population across multiple conversational tasks and with different types of adult partners. Typically developing children aged 5 to 8 years (n = 45) engaged in four semi-structured conversations that differed by task (problem-solving vs. play-based) and by partner (parent vs. university student), resulting in a corpus of 180 conversations. Lexical alignment scores were calculated and compared to sham conversations, representing alignment occurring at the level of chance. Both children and adults coordinated their conversational utterances by re-using or aligning each other's word choices. This alignment behavior persisted across conversational tasks and partners, although the degree of alignment was moderated by the conversational context. These findings suggest that lexical alignment is a robust phenomenon in conversations between school-age children and adults. Furthermore, this study extends lexical alignment findings to a non-WEIRD culture, suggesting that alignment may be a coordination strategy employed by adults and children across diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Perceptual Learning of Dysarthria in Adolescence

PURPOSE

As evidenced by perceptual learning studies involving adult listeners and speakers with dysarthria, adaptation to dysarthric speech is driven by signal predictability (speaker property) and a flexible speech perception system (listener property). Here, we extend adaptation investigations to adolescent populations and examine whether adult and adolescent listeners can learn to better understand an adolescent speaker with dysarthria.

METHOD

Classified by developmental stage, adult (n = 42) and adolescent (n = 40) listeners completed a three-phase perceptual learning protocol (pretest, familiarization, and posttest). During pretest and posttest, all listeners transcribed speech produced by a 13-year-old adolescent with spastic dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy. During familiarization, half of the adult and adolescent listeners engaged in structured familiarization (audio and lexical feedback) with the speech of the adolescent speaker with dysarthria; and the other half, with the speech of a neurotypical adolescent speaker (control).

RESULTS

Intelligibility scores increased from pretest to posttest for all listeners. However, listeners who received dysarthria familiarization achieved greater intelligibility improvements than those who received control familiarization. Furthermore, there was a significant effect of developmental stage, where the adults achieved greater intelligibility improvements relative to the adolescents.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides the first tranche of evidence that adolescent dysarthric speech is learnable-a finding that holds even for adolescent listeners whose speech perception systems are not yet fully developed. Given the formative role that social interactions play during adolescence, these findings of improved intelligibility afford important clinical implications.

Speech Entrainment in Adolescent Conversations: A Developmental Perspective

PURPOSE

Defined as the similarity of speech behaviors between interlocutors, speech entrainment plays an important role in successful adult conversations. According to theoretical models of entrainment and research on motoric, cognitive, and social developmental milestones, the ability to entrain should develop throughout adolescence. However, little is known about the specific developmental trajectory or the role of speech entrainment in conversational outcomes of this age group. The purpose of this study is to characterize speech entrainment patterns in the conversations of neurotypical early adolescents.

METHOD

This study utilized a corpus of 96 task-based conversations between adolescents between the ages of 9 and 14 years and a comparison corpus of 32 task-based conversations between adults. For each conversational turn, two speech entrainment scores were calculated for 429 acoustic features across rhythmic, articulatory, and phonatory dimensions. Predictive modeling was used to evaluate the degree of entrainment and relationship between entrainment and two metrics of conversational success.

RESULTS

Speech entrainment increased throughout early adolescence but did not reach the level exhibited in conversations between adults. Additionally, speech entrainment was predictive of both conversational quality and conversational efficiency. Furthermore, models that included all acoustic features and both entrainment types performed better than models that only included individual acoustic feature sets or one type of entrainment.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings show that speech entrainment skills are largely developed during early adolescence with continued development possibly occurring across later adolescence. Additionally, results highlight the role of speech entrainment in successful conversation in this population, suggesting the import of continued exploration of this phenomenon in both neurotypical and neurodivergent adolescents. We also provide evidence of the value of using holistic measures that capture the multidimensionality of speech entrainment and provide a validated methodology for investigating entrainment across multiple acoustic features and entrainment types.

Caregiver Perceptions of Social Communication and Interaction: Development and Validation of the SCIPS

Social communication and interaction (SC/I) skill quality may be influenced by cultural values, norms, and expectations. Because difficulties in SC/I is a core criterion for identifying autism and is a frequent construct of interest in autism research, a measure designed to capture cross-cultural differences in the perspectives of SC/I skills is warranted. To address this need we developed and validated the Social Communication and Interaction Perceptions Scale (SCIPS), a caregiver report measure for children ages 6-18 years, that measures both frequency and perceived importance of various SC/I skills. Results from 401 diverse caregiver participants showed that for both domains (i.e., Frequency and Importance) the SCIPS has good reliability (α = 0.88-0.95) and two factors that examine basic and advanced aspects of SC/I skills. Findings support the use of the SCIPS as a measure of caregiver perspectives of SC/I skills in clinical and research contexts.

Classifying Conversational Entrainment of Speech Behavior: An Expanded Framework and Review

Conversational entrainment, also known as alignment, accommodation, convergence, and coordination, is broadly defined as similarity of communicative behavior between interlocutors. Within current literature, specific terminology, definitions, and measurement approaches are wide-ranging and highly variable. As new ways of measuring and quantifying entrainment are developed and research in this area continues to expand, consistent terminology and a means of organizing entrainment research is critical, affording cohesion and assimilation of knowledge. While systems for categorizing entrainment do exist, these efforts are not entirely comprehensive in that specific measurement approaches often used within entrainment literature cannot be categorized under existing frameworks. The purpose of this review article is twofold: First, we propose an expanded version of an earlier framework which allows for the categorization of all measures of entrainment of speech behaviors and includes refinements, additions, and explanations aimed at improving its clarity and accessibility. Second, we present an extensive literature review, demonstrating how current literature fits into the given framework. We conclude with a discussion of how the proposed entrainment framework presented herein can be used to unify efforts in entrainment research.

Rhythm Perception, Speaking Rate Entrainment, and Conversational Quality: A Mediated Model

PURPOSE

Acoustic-prosodic entrainment, defined as the tendency for individuals to modify their speech behaviors to more closely align with the behaviors of their conversation partner, plays an important role in successful interaction. From a mechanistic perspective, acoustic-prosodic entrainment is, by its very nature, a rhythmic activity. Accordingly, it is highly plausible that an individual's rhythm perception abilities play a role in their ability to successfully entrain. Here, we examine the impact of rhythm perception in speaking rate entrainment and subsequent conversational quality.

METHOD

A round-robin paradigm was used to collect 90 dialogues from neurotypical adults. Additional assessments determined participants' rhythm perception abilities, social competence, and partner familiarity (i.e., whether the conversation partners knew each other prior to the interaction. Mediation analysis was used to examine the relationships between rhythm perception scores, speaking rate entrainment (using a measure of static local synchrony), and a measure of conversational success (i.e., conversational quality) based on third-party listener observations. Findings were compared to the same analysis with three additional predictive factors: participant gender, partner familiarity, and social competence.

RESULTS

Results revealed a relationship between rhythm perception and speaking rate entrainment. In unfamiliar conversation partners, there was a relationship between speaking rate entrainment and conversational quality. The relationships between entrainment and each of the three additional factors (i.e., gender, partner familiarity, and social competence) were nonsignificant.

CONCLUSIONS

In unfamiliar conversation partners, better rhythm perception abilities were indicative of increased conversational quality mediated by higher levels of speaking rate entrainment. These results support theoretical postulations specifying rhythm perception abilities as a component of acoustic-prosodic entrainment, which, in turn, facilitates conversational success. Knowledge of this relationship contributes to the development of a causal framework for considering a mechanism by which rhythm perception deficits in clinical populations may impact conversational success.

An Examination of Articulatory Precision in Autistic Children and Adults

PURPOSE

According to the speech attunement framework, autistic individuals lack the ability and/or motivation to "tune up" their speech to the same level of precision as their neurotypical peers. However, previous studies exploring the articulatory patterns of autistic individuals have yielded disparate findings. One reason contrasting conclusions exist may be because studies have relied on perceptual measures of articulation. Here, we use an objective acoustic measure of articulatory precision to explore the articulatory patterns of autistic children and adults.

METHOD

This was a retrospective analysis of an existing corpus of 900 recorded speech samples taken from 30 adult and 30 child participants across two different population groups: autistic individuals (autism spectrum disorder [ASD] group) and neurotypical individuals (neurotypical [NT] group). Articulatory precision scores were calculated using an automated metric that compares observed acoustics to the expected acoustics for each phoneme production. Linear mixed-effects models were used to compare the articulatory precision scores across population group (i.e., ASD group vs. NT group) and to see if these differences were moderated by age group (i.e., children vs. adult).

RESULTS

The speech of autistic individuals was characterized by reduced articulatory precision relative to their neurotypical peers. This pattern was not significantly moderated by age, indicating it occurred in both the children and adult groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Our preliminary findings indicate that imprecise articulation may be a characteristic of the speech of autistic individuals in both childhood and adulthood. These findings are in line with predictions posited by the speech attunement framework. Given the current lack of speech markers for this clinical population and the importance of speech quality in the social integration of autistic individuals, our results advance articulatory precision as a viable and important target for future research.

From Speech Acoustics to Communicative Participation in Dysarthria: Toward a Causal Framework

PURPOSE

We proposed and tested a causal instantiation of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework, linking acoustics, intelligibility, and communicative participation in the context of dysarthria.

METHOD

Speech samples and communicative participation scores were collected from individuals with dysarthria (n = 32). Speech was analyzed for two acoustic metrics (i.e., articulatory precision and speech rate), and an objective measure of intelligibility was generated from listener transcripts. Mediation analysis was used to evaluate pathways of effect between acoustics, intelligibility, and communicative participation.

RESULTS

We observed a strong relationship between articulatory precision and intelligibility and a moderate relationship between intelligibility and communicative participation. Collectively, data supported a significant relationship between articulatory precision and communicative participation, which was almost entirely mediated through intelligibility. These relationships were not significant when speech rate was specified as the acoustic variable of interest.

CONCLUSION

The statistical corroboration of our causal instantiation of the ICF framework with articulatory acoustics affords important support toward the development of a comprehensive causal framework to understand and, ultimately, address restricted communicative participation in dysarthria.

Conversational Coordination of Articulation Responds to Context: A Clinical Test Case With Traumatic Brain Injury

Purpose Coordination of communicative behavior supports shared understanding in conversation. The current study brings together analysis of two speech coordination strategies, entrainment and compensation of articulation, in a preliminary investigation into whether strategy organization is shaped by a challenging communicative context-conversing with a person who has a communication disorder. Method As an initial clinical test case, an automated measure of articulatory precision was analyzed in a corpus of spoken dialogue, where a confederate conversed with participants with traumatic brain injury (n = 28) and participants with no brain injury (n = 48). Results Overall, the confederate engaged in significant entrainment and high compensation (hyperarticulation) in conversations with participants with traumatic brain injury relative to significant entrainment and low compensation (hypoarticulation) in conversations with participants with no brain injury. Furthermore, the confederate's articulatory precision changed over the course of the conversations. Conclusions Findings suggest that the organization of conversational coordination is sensitive to context, supporting synergistic models of spoken dialogue. While corpus limitations are acknowledged, these initial results point to differences in the way in which speech strategies are realized in challenging communicative contexts, highlighting a viable and important target for investigation with clinical populations. A framework for investigating speech coordination strategies in tandem and ideas for advancing this line of inquiry serve as key contributions of this work.

Methodology Matters: The Impact of Research Design on Conversational Entrainment Outcomes

Purpose Conversational entrainment describes the tendency for individuals to alter their communicative behaviors to more closely align with those of their conversation partner. This communication phenomenon has been widely studied, and thus, the methodologies used to examine it are diverse. Here, we summarize key differences in research design and present a test case to examine the effect of methodology on entrainment outcomes. Method Sixty neurotypical adults were randomly assigned to experimental groups formed by a 2 × 2 factorial combination of two independent variables: stimuli organization (blocked vs. random presentation) and stimuli modality (auditory-only vs. audiovisual stimuli). Individuals participated in a quasiconversational design in which the speech of a virtual interlocutor was manipulated to produce fast and slow speech rate conditions. Results There was a significant effect of stimuli organization on entrainment outcomes. Individuals in the blocked, but not the random, groups altered their speech rate to align with the speech rate of the virtual interlocutor. There were no effect of stimuli modality and no interaction between modality and organization on entrainment outcomes. Conclusion Findings highlight the importance of methodological decisions on entrainment outcomes. This underscores the need for more comprehensive research regarding entrainment methodology.

Going With the Flow: An Examination of Entrainment in Typically Developing Children

Purpose Conversational entrainment is the tendency for individuals to modify their behavior to more closely converge with the behavior of their communication partner and is an important aspect of successful interaction. Evidence of entrainment in adults is robust, yet research regarding its development in children is sparse. Here, we investigate the emergence of entrainment skills in typically developing children. Method Data were collected from a total of 50 typically developing children between the ages of 5 and 14 years. Children participated in a quasiconversational paradigm with a virtual interlocutor. Speech rate of the interlocutor was digitally manipulated to produce fast and slow speech rate conditions. Results Data from the fast and slow conditions were compared using linear mixed models. Results indicated that children, regardless of age, did not alter their speech to match the rate of the virtual interlocutor. Conclusions Findings suggest that entrainment in children may not be as robust as entrainment in adults and therefore not adequately captured with the current experimental paradigm. Modifications to the current paradigm will help identify a methodology sufficiently sensitive to capture the speech alignment phenomenon in children and provide much needed information regarding the typical stages of entrainment development.

Speech Rate Entrainment in Children and Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE

Conversational entrainment, a phenomenon whereby people modify their behaviors to match their communication partner, has been evidenced as critical to successful conversation. It is plausible that deficits in entrainment contribute to the conversational breakdowns and social difficulties exhibited by people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study examined speech rate entrainment in children and adult populations with and without ASD.

METHOD

Sixty participants including typically developing children, children with ASD, typically developed adults, and adults with ASD participated in a quasi-conversational paradigm with a pseudoconfederate. The confederate's speech rate was digitally manipulated to create slow and fast speech rate conditions.

RESULTS

Typically developed adults entrained their speech rate in the quasi-conversational paradigm, using a faster rate during the fast speech rate conditions and a slower rate during the slow speech rate conditions. This entrainment pattern was not evident in adults with ASD or in children populations.

CONCLUSION

Findings suggest that speech rate entrainment is a developmentally acquired skill and offers preliminary evidence of speech rate entrainment deficits in adults with ASD. Impairments in this area may contribute to the conversational breakdowns and social difficulties experienced by this population. Future work is needed to advance this area of inquiry.