A literature review of word recognition

These distractors all affect the effectiveness of speech recognition. Selective attention is particularly important to allow the listener to utilize filtering process to ensure the important signal is not disregarded (Dupoux, Kouider & Mehler, 2003). The most fortunate thing is that listeners could exploit the messenger’s other means of delivering information including semantic, prosodic, or gestural to comprehend the message. Mattys, Carroll, Li, and Chan (2010) argued that these methods of acquiring information play a critical role as they ensure that attended-to-speech signal is processed during unintended distractions. However, this negatively influences the objective of the message as abstract information is more likely to be processed compared to that at a lower level (Mattys et al. It was noted that the semantic-lexical information had a profound impact when a listener faces speech distraction (Mattys et al.

However, the semantic-contextual information was also found to be influential in distractive listening (Daly, Szostak, &Pitt, in preparation). That is, individuals’ word recognition would not only be influenced by the word right next to each other, but other contextual information in the sentence. Research indicate the existence of biasing information using the possibility of an unclear segment which a listener can integrate to produce a meaningful sentence (Daly, Szostak, &Pitt, in preparation). For example, is a target speaker say “-ing had multiple feathers,” a listener might comprehend the –ing as “wing” In their study, for participants to be influenced by the whole sentential context of a word, their memory of the previous word must be maintained until the presence of later biasing information.

Toro, Sinnett, and Soto-Faraco (2005) discussed two types of distractors: speech and non-speech. Speech distractors include people or things that interfere with word-processing on the side of the listener by intercepting message delivery from the speaker. For example, a second speaker may interrupt the speech by uttering words that counteract the intended information. Non-speech distractors includes all types of information that might be influential during a conversation. For example, sound by moving objects such as vehicles or other building or road users may cause noise that would distract the main speaker, and the visual components within that might also divert the attention of the listener. WM is a short-term memory that enables people to keep information in a short span. According to Conway et al.

(2005), WM is central in psychology with the abilities to perform tasks like counting, operation, and reading. In other words, WM is a multicomponent system that maintains information in ongoing processing or distraction during message delivery. On the other hand, the WMC is the measure of WM, which means the capacity an individual portrays when in processing information in the working memory (Conway et al. (2001) showed that individuals who detect their name in an unintended message have equally low WMC, hence, the difficulty of blocking or inhibiting information that is distractive. These studies illustrate a direct relationship between WM and WMC. According to Conway et al. (2005), WMC has two components: domain-general and domain specific. The domain-general, also known as the executive control, is the ability of the listener to keep information in the active memory while simultaneously processing information due to interference.

For example, Conway et al. (2001) incorporated the names of the participants in the speech of the second speaker to measure the extent in which WMC level could affect the ability of the listeners to detect their names in when mentioned by the distractor. They found that individuals with low WMC recognize their names in an irrelevant message, which authors interpreted as their inability to block unintended message. The authors affirmed their premise when they noted that the subjects did not hear their colleague’s names. The scenario shows that individuals with lower WMC reach their capacity early compared to those with higher WMC, which explains their inability to filter or inhibit irrelevant information. They also found that people with higher WMC would be less likely to be biased by the context when the distraction is speech but not non-speech.

However, (main resource) study didn’t have a conclusive finding in how WMC is different when the distraction type is different. The present study brings these two lines of work together to ask whether WMC’s influence on spoken word recognition differs for different distracting environments (speech vs. non-speech). We will test the participants’ WMC and have them do a distracting listening task where speech and non-speech distractors are presented along with words to be recognized. The overall purpose of the experiment was to examine the influence of WMC on how words are identified in situations when speech is interrupted by a second speaker, resulting in a distracted reception of information from the listener’s viewpoint. Expressly, the interest of the study confines itself to an exploration of the extent WMC could influence the listener to rely on subsequent biasing information.

The build a more understanding of the effect of WMC on word processing, the current study adopted Experiment 4 (Daly, Szostak, &Pitt, in preparation). To do so, the study combined views from Mattys et al. (2010), notably, the premise that distractors cause a similar impact on word identification difficulties, the current research paired target sentences as used in Experiment with non-speech distractors. For example, in “The wing had an exquisite set of diamonds,” it is expected that a listener would possibly identify an ambiguous word as “ring” as opposed to “wing” since the former shows a better match in the sentence. On the contrary, based on the understanding that listeners with a high WMC equally have more executive attention, it translates that they will maintain a significant lexical representation of ambiguous words in their WM while trying to discard irrelevant information from the intended message.

Consequently, it is expected that individuals with high WMC would equally report ambiguous words in a great extent. For example, reporting “wing” after hearing “The wing had an exquisite set of diamonds” it is highly possible among listeners with high WMC. The current study embraced modifications on the Daly, Szostak and Pitt framework. However, this could not be the case with an incongruent condition as greater bias would compromise accuracy since the biasing word would be semantically associated with a distracting word. A different situation is expected in a congruent condition as the target and biasing words be associated congruently. No differences are expected across WMC and biased and target word responses should be high. For example, in “The wing had an exquisite set of feathers” sentence, responses in target and biasing words are relatively high because wing, which is the intended word as well as a biased word.

Therefore, the interest of the current study lies in the incongruent condition since the performance of congruent condition is thought not to be informative as it pertains to how the distraction influence processing of the ambiguous words. ” Also, the final word of the other pair of the sentence was biased against the competitor. For example, “The wing had a multiple sets of diamonds whereby a ring would be semantically linked to diamonds. ” Throughout the experiment, the target word was the second word. The study ensured there are six to eight syllables between the target word and the biasing word. The stimuli were recorded, and the final word spliced from the sentence. al. Updating task was selected because Wilhen, Hildebrandt and Oberauer (2013) found positive correlations between the updating collection of tasks and the complex span tasks, and (Schmiedek, Lövdén & Lindenberger, 2014) confirmed the finding.

Since Operational Span (Ospan) task is historically one of the most frequently used tasks by an extensive amount of literature (e. g. Amir & Bomyea, 2011; Aslan & Bäuml, 2011; Redick et al. Variance in timbre in languages used was observed. Upon the construction of sound-chains, the mean amplitude was set at 70 dB same as to that of the secondary talker. Then, this was combined with target talker sentences. Procedure Part 1: Working Memory Participants will see a series of boxes on the screen, and remember the digits showed up in the boxes. Only one number will appear at a time, and each box will eventually have at least one digit showed up. The experiment ensured that no target word could be repeated within the same block.

A fixed pseudorandomized framework was utilized in presenting items. In each trial, participants were subjected to a single stimulus item, whereby the subject could type what he/she heard after talkers finished speaking. They were guided that the target word was always the second word in a sentence. Participants then pressed the “s” key on the keyboard upon judging the sentence and confirming that it made sense or “n” if otherwise. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120, 504-509. Aslan, A. , & Bäuml, K. Individual differences in working memory capacity predict retrieval-induced forgetting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 264-269. , Wilhelm, O. , & Engle, R. Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user’s guide. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(5), 769-786. doi: 10. Individual differences in category learning: Sometimes less working memory capacity is better than more.

Cognition, 107, 284-294. Dupoux, E. , Kouider, S. , & Mehler, J. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, And Cognition, 26(2), 336-358. doi: 10. 336 Kozou, H. , Kujala, T. , Shtyrov, Y. , May, C. P. , & Hasher, L. Working memory span and the role of proactive interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 199-207. , & Benjamin, A. Remembering words not presented in sentences: How study context changes patterns of false memories. Memory & Cognition, 37(1), 52-64. doi: 10. 3758/mc. The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex frontal lobe tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology ,41, 49–100. Otten, M. , & Van Berkum, J. J. , & Cook, L. G. Effects of stress and working memory capacity on foreign language readers’ inferential processing during comprehension. Language Learning, 61, 187-218. Redick, T. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 36-56.