Search

In face-to-face interaction, speakers spontaneously produce manual gestures that can facilitate listeners' comprehension of spoken language. The present study explores the factors affecting the uptake and influence of gesture cues in situations where a speaker is referring to objects visible to the listener. In this context, the listener's attention must be distributed across various scene regions, potentially reducing the ability to draw on and apply gesture cues in real time. In two experiments, the instruction provided by a speaker (e.g., "pick up the candy") was accompanied by an iconic grasp gesture (produced alongside the verb) that reflected the size/shape of the intended target. Effects on listeners' comprehension were compared with a no-gesture condition. Experiment 1 (audiovisual gating task) showed that, under simplified processing circumstances, gesture cues allowed earlier identification of intended targets. Experiment 2 (eye tracking) explored whether this facilitation is found in real-time comprehension, and whether attention to gesture information is influenced by the acoustic environment (quiet vs. background noise). Measures of gaze position showed that although the speaker's gesturing hand was rarely fixated directly, gestures did facilitate comprehension, particularly when the target object was smaller relative to alternatives. The magnitude of the gesture effect was greater in quiet than in noise, suggesting that the latter did not provoke listeners to increase attention to gesture to compensate for the challenging auditory signal. Together, the findings clarify how situational factors influence listeners' attention to visual information during real-time comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Background Postural sway during quiet standing has been shown as a useful task to assess risk of falling in older adults. While the risk of falling is consistently reported to be higher in older females than males, the sex-related differences in postural sway are not consistent across the studies. Research question What are the effects of age and sex on postural sway during quiet standing during different stance conditions? Methods We examined the effects of age (40 young and 34 older adults), sex (37 males and 37 females), and their interaction on the postural sway during different stance conditions. We compared the center of pressure (CoP) velocity, amplitude and frequency during parallel (eyes open and eyes closed) and semi-tandem (eyes open) stances. Results Our results suggest that postural sway is similar between sexes in young participants, while older males exhibit larger postural sway than older female participants (10/21 outcomes). Older female participants exhibited lower CoP amplitude (but larger total and anterior-posterior CoP velocity) compared to young female participants. We also found that the increase in the postural sway with increasing task difficulty is more pronounced in older vs. young adults. Significance This study shows that ageing-related changes in postural sway are sex- and task-specific. Researchers and clinicians need to be aware of these effects when comparing groups or monitoring changes in time.

In classroom settings, pupils claim to find it advantageous listening to music over headphones while doing school tasks. On the one hand, listening to music while doing school tasks is a form of multitasking, in which case, it may not be as advantageous as pupils believe. On the other hand, some forms of music have been found to facilitate cognitive processing. Furthermore, many classrooms are less than quiet, such that music be advantageous for school tasks due to masking classroom noise. These three perspectives (multitasking, cognitive facilitation and masking) are addressed in an experiment with middle school pupils´ performance on tasks of language comprehension (Close task) and math facts.

PurposeThis study examines the impact of narcissism on young luxury consumers' preferences for quiet versus loud luxury products in China and the United States. As young consumers are increasingly becoming the bedrock of global luxury growth, it is imperative for marketing researchers and practitioners to understand the psychological and social needs of these consumers.Design/methodology/approachA two-study examination of young Chinese and US luxury consumers suggests that the two types of narcissism influence luxury consumption in different ways. Study 1 is a survey of young Chinese consumers that examines how the impact of narcissism on luxury purchase is mediated by social attitude functions and moderated by social anxiety. Study 2 is an experiment conducted in both the United States and China that establishes the causal relationship between the different types of narcissism and purchase intention toward quiet versus loud luxury products.FindingsBuilding on an overarching framework that integrates both the narcissism literature and social attitude function theory, this study shows that overt narcissistic (vs. covert) consumers hold a value-expressive (vs. social-adjustive) attitude toward luxury products, which leads them to prefer quiet (vs. loud) luxury. In addition, higher levels of social anxiety enhance the mediating role of narcissistic consumers' social attitude functions.Originality/valueThis study advances understanding of young Chinese and US luxury consumers' narcissistic consumption patterns by proposing and empirically testing a novel research model that examines the mechanisms by which overt and covert narcissism leads to a different preference of quiet and loud luxury via the routes of different social attitude functions.

Purpose This study reports on the development of an auditory passage comprehension task for Swedish primary school children of cultural and linguistic diversity. It also reports on their performance on the task in quiet and in noise. Method Eighty-eight children aged 7–9 years and showing normal hearing participated. The children were divided into three groups based on presumed language exposure: 13 children were categorized as Swedish-speaking monolinguals, 19 children were categorized as simultaneous bilinguals, and 56 children were categorized as sequential bilinguals. No significant difference in working memory capacity was seen between the three language groups. Two passages and associated multiple-choice questions were developed. During development of the passage comprehension task, steps were taken to reduce the impact of culture-specific prior experience and knowledge on performance. This was achieved by using the story grammar principles, universal topics and plots, and simple language that avoided complex or unusual grammatical structures and words. Results The findings indicate no significant difference between the two passages and similar response distributions. Passage comprehension performance was significantly better in quiet than in noise, regardless of language exposure group. The monolinguals outperformed both simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in both listening conditions. Conclusions Because the task was designed to minimize the effect of cultural knowledge on auditory passage comprehension, this suggests that compared with monolinguals, both simultaneous and sequential bilinguals have a disadvantage in auditory passage comprehension. As expected, the findings demonstrate that noise has a negative effect on auditory passage comprehension. The magnitude of this effect does not relate to language exposure. The developed auditory passage comprehension task seems suitable for assessing auditory passage comprehension in primary school children of linguistic and cultural diversity.

It was April 2020. Except for the hissing sounds of ventilators and beeping monitors, the intensive care unit was eerily quiet. Overlaying this was the hum of doctors calling families to provide up...

Purpose This study investigates the acoustic environment of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and the relationship between exposure to speech, in noise and in quiet, and the children's lexical production up to 1 year after CI activation, while controlling for the effect of early individual differences in receptive vocabulary growth. Method Eighteen children with CIs were observed at 3, 6, and 12 months after CI activation. Children's spontaneous word production during interaction with their mothers (types and tokens) and their expressive and receptive vocabulary size were considered. The characteristics of the acoustic environments in terms of acoustic scenes (speech in noise or in quiet, quiet, noise, music, and other) and of loudness ranges were assessed using data logging of the children's devices. Results Data analysis showed that both the number of tokens and the number of types produced 1 year after CI activation were affected by the children's exposure to speech in quiet with a loudness range between 40 and 69 dB. Expressive vocabulary size and types were affected by the receptive vocabulary knowledge that the children achieved over the first 3 months after CI activation. Conclusions Our data support the role of speech environment and individual differences in early comprehension on lexical production. The importance of exposure to speech with particular characteristics for the lexical development of children with CIs and the implications for clinical practice are discussed.

BACKGROUND: When a person walks a dog, information from variables of their own postural control is integrated with haptic information from the dog’s movements (e.g., direction, speed of movement, pulling forces). AIM: We examined how haptic information provided through contact with a moving endpoint (here, the leash of a dog walking on a treadmill) influenced an individual’s postural control during a quiet tandem standing task with and without restricted vision and under various elevations of the support surface (increased task difficulty levels). METHOD: Adults performed a 30-second quiet tandem stance task on a force platform while holding a leash attached to a dog who walked on a treadmill parallel to the force platform. Conditions included: haptic contact (dog and no-dog), vision constraint (eyes open, EO, and eyes closed, EC), and surfaces (4 heights). RESULTS: Interaction between haptic condition and vision showed that contact with the dog leash reduced root mean square (RMS) and mean sway speed (MSS). RMS showed that the highest surface had the greatest rate of sway reduction during haptic contact with EC, and an increase with EO. CONCLUSION: The dog’s movements were used as a haptic reference to aid balance when eyes were closed. In this condition, contact with the dog’s leash reduced the extent of sway variability on the higher surfaces.

The quiet ego refers to a self-construal that is balanced and growth-oriented in its stance toward the self and others. It is conceptualized as representing the intersection of four characteristics: inclusive identity, perspective taking, detached awareness, and growth-mindedness. As a relatively new construct, the quiet ego has been validated in domains relating to balance, compassion, and growth. However, its construct validity has rarely been examined with regard to other aspects of self-identity that are both conceptually similar and have implications for well-being. Building on existing work on the quiet ego and self-concept clarity, we first examined the quiet ego’s theoretical relation with self-concept clarity (Study 1, N = 1099) using a confirmatory factor analysis approach and then investigated its associations with psychological well-being and self-esteem from the perspective of self-concept clarity using path modeling (Study 2, pre-registered, N = 500). We found that the quiet ego was positively associated with self-concept clarity and that the quiet ego predicted psychological well-being and self-esteem indirectly via its association with self-concept clarity.

Objective Everyday speech understanding frequently occurs in perceptually demanding environments, for example, due to background noise and normal age-related hearing loss. The resulting degraded speech signals increase listening effort, which gives rise to negative downstream effects on subsequent memory and comprehension, even when speech is intelligible. In two experiments, we explored whether the presentation of realistic assistive text captioned speech offsets the negative effects of background noise and hearing impairment on multiple measures of speech memory. Design In Experiment 1, young normal-hearing adults (N = 48) listened to sentences for immediate recall and delayed recognition memory. Speech was presented in quiet or in two levels of background noise. Sentences were either presented as speech only or as text captioned speech. Thus, the experiment followed a 2 (caption vs no caption) × 3 (no noise, +7 dB signal-to-noise ratio, +3 dB signal-to-noise ratio) within-subjects design. In Experiment 2, a group of older adults (age range: 61 to 80, N = 31), with varying levels of hearing acuity completed the same experimental task as in Experiment 1. For both experiments, immediate recall, recognition memory accuracy, and recognition memory confidence were analyzed via general(ized) linear mixed-effects models. In addition, we examined individual differences as a function of hearing acuity in Experiment 2. Results In Experiment 1, we found that the presentation of realistic text-captioned speech in young normal-hearing listeners showed improved immediate recall and delayed recognition memory accuracy and confidence compared with speech alone. Moreover, text captions attenuated the negative effects of background noise on all speech memory outcomes. In Experiment 2, we replicated the same pattern of results in a sample of older adults with varying levels of hearing acuity. Moreover, we showed that the negative effects of hearing loss on speech memory in older adulthood were attenuated by the presentation of text captions. Conclusions Collectively, these findings strongly suggest that the simultaneous presentation of text can offset the negative effects of effortful listening on speech memory. Critically, captioning benefits extended from immediate word recall to long-term sentence recognition memory, a benefit that was observed not only for older adults with hearing loss but also young normal-hearing listeners. These findings suggest that the text captioning benefit to memory is robust and has potentially wide applications for supporting speech listening in acoustically challenging environments.

Background Considerable variability exists in the speech recognition abilities achieved by children with cochlear implants (CIs) due to varying demographic and performance variables including language abilities. Purpose This article examines the factors associated with speech recognition performance of school-aged children with CIs who were grouped by language ability. Research Design This is a single-center cross-sectional study with repeated measures for subjects across two language groups. Study Sample Participants included two groups of school-aged children, ages 7 to 17 years, who received unilateral or bilateral CIs by 4 years of age. The High Language group (N = 26) had age-appropriate spoken-language abilities, and the Low Language group (N = 24) had delays in their spoken-language abilities. Data Collection and Analysis Group comparisons were conducted to examine the impact of demographic characteristics on word recognition in quiet and sentence recognition in quiet and noise. Results Speech recognition in quiet and noise was significantly poorer in the Low Language compared with the High Language group. Greater hours of implant use and better adherence to auditory-verbal (AV) therapy appointments were associated with higher speech recognition in quiet and noise. Conclusion To ensure maximal speech recognition in children with low-language outcomes, professionals should develop strategies to ensure that families support full-time CI use and have the means to consistently attend AV appointments.

Purpose This study (a) examined the effect of different levels of background noise on speech intelligibility and perceived listening effort in speakers with impaired and intact speech following treatment for head and neck cancer (HNC) and (b) determined the relative contribution of speech intelligibility, speaker group, and background noise to a measure of perceived listening effort. Method Ten speakers diagnosed with nasal, oral, or oropharyngeal HNC provided audio recordings of six sentences from the Sentence Intelligibility Test. All speakers were 100% intelligible in quiet: Five speakers with HNC exhibited mild speech imprecisions (speech impairment group), and five speakers with HNC demonstrated intact speech (HNC control group). Speech recordings were presented to 30 inexperienced listeners, who transcribed the sentences and rated perceived listening effort in quiet and two levels (+7 and +5 dB SNR) of background noise. Results Significant Group × Noise interactions were found for speech intelligibility and perceived listening effort. While no differences in speech intelligibility were found between the speaker groups in quiet, the results showed that, as the signal-to-noise ratio decreased, speakers with intact speech (HNC control) performed significantly better (greater intelligibility, less perceived listening effort) than those with speech imprecisions in the two noise conditions. Perceived listening effort was also shown to be associated with decreased speech intelligibility, imprecise speech, and increased background noise. Conclusions Speakers with HNC who are 100% intelligible in quiet but who exhibit some degree of imprecise speech are particularly vulnerable to the effects of increased background noise in comparison to those with intact speech. Results have implications for speech evaluations, counseling, and rehabilitation.

Objectives Children with limited hearing unilaterally might experience more listening effort than children with normal hearing, yet previous studies have not confirmed this. This study compared listening effort in school-age children with normal hearing and children with limited hearing unilaterally using behavioral and subjective listening effort measures. Design Two groups of school-age children (aged 7–12 years) participated: 19 with limited hearing unilaterally and 18 with normal hearing bilaterally. Participants completed digit triplet recognition tasks in quiet and in noise (−12 dB SNR) in three loudspeaker conditions: midline, direct, and indirect. Verbal response times during the recognition task were interpreted as behavioral listening effort. Subjective ratings of “task difficulty” and “hard to think” were interpreted as subjective listening effort. Participant age was included as a covariate in analysis of behavioral data. Results Noise negatively affected digit triplet recognition for both groups in the midline loudspeaker condition and for participants with limited hearing unilaterally in the direct and indirect conditions. Relative to their peers with normal hearing, children with limited hearing unilaterally exhibited significantly longer response times and higher ratings of effort only in the noisy, indirect condition. Differences between groups were evident even when age differences were controlled for statistically. Conclusions Using behavioral and subjective indices of listening effort, children with limited unilateral hearing demonstrated significantly more listening effort relative to their peers with normal hearing during the difficult indirect listening condition. Implications include classroom accommodations to limit indirect listening situations for children with limited useable hearing unilaterally and consideration of intervention options.

The Quiet Classroom Game (Radley in School Psychological Review 45: 93–108, 2016) is a class-wide behavior intervention involving an interdependent group contingency based on classroom noise level. It has been shown to be effective at increasing academically engaged behavior, decreasing disruptive behavior, and decreasing classroom noise level in three first-grade classrooms. The current study was undertaken to replicate and extend research on the QCG. Using an ABAB design, we investigated the impact of the QCG on on-task behavior, off-task behavior, and classroom noise level across three seventh-grade classrooms. We also investigated a procedure for systematically fading the teacher feedback component of the QCG in a maintenance phase. Results were not supportive of a functional relation between the QCG and on-task behavior and off-task behavior for any of the three classrooms. However, there was a functional relation between the QCG and classroom noise level for two of three classrooms. Implications for researchers and practitioners, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Internationally adopted adolescents face the crucial developmental task of shaping their ethnic identity by balancing their dual belongingness to the current cultural background and the birth country's ethnic background. This process does not depend exclusively on individual variables, but it is embedded within the social context. The present study was aimed at exploring the role of ethnic discrimination in moderating the association between reflected minority categorization, on the one hand, and ethnic identity, on the other. A self-report questionnaire was administrated to 180 internationally adopted adolescents. Results showed that at high levels of ethnic discrimination the relation between reflected minority categorization and ethnic identity in terms of commitment was negative and stronger. When considering instead ethnic identity in terms of exploration, it is possible to note that higher levels of reflected minority categorization were associated with higher levels of exploration. Findings are discussed in light of post-adoption intervention for adoptees.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the aging effects on the categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical Tones 1–4 and Tones 1–2 in noise. It also investigated whether listeners' categorical tone perception in noise correlated with their general tone identification of 20 natural vowel-plus-tone signals in noise. Method Twelve younger and 12 older listeners with normal hearing were recruited in both tone identification and discrimination tasks in a CP paradigm where fundamental frequency contours of target stimuli varied systematically from the flat tone (Tone 1) to the rising/falling tones (Tones 2/4). Both tasks were conducted in quiet and noise with signal-to-noise ratios set at −5 and −10 dB, respectively, and general tone identification of natural speech signals was also tested in noise conditions. Results Compared with younger listeners, older listeners had shallower identification slopes and smaller discrimination peakedness in Tones 1–2/4 perception in all listening conditions, except for Tones 1–4 perception in quiet where no group differences were found. Meanwhile, noise affected Tones 1–2/4 perception: The signal-to-noise ratio condition at −10 dB brought shallower slope in Tones 1–2/4 identification and less peakedness in Tones 1–4 discrimination for both listener groups. Older listeners' CP in noise, the identification slopes in particular, positively correlated with their general tone identification in noise, but such correlations were partially missing for younger listeners. Conclusions Both aging and the presence of speech-shaped noise significantly reduced the CP of Mandarin Tones 1–2/4. Listeners' Mandarin tone recognition may be related to their CP of Mandarin tones.

Many individuals travel between countries as part of their professional routines. How do they perform during those short trips abroad? To begin to answer this question, I analyzed the outcomes of over 5 million chess games played around the world. Importantly, tournament chess provides a clean setting in which location-dependent factors are mostly irrelevant; the audiences are quiet and the referees make hardly any judgments. Controlling for differences in chess skills, I found enhanced performance among players who were competing outside of their home countries. This finding was robust to additional controls such as age, sex, and skill momentum or game practice, and to the inclusion of individual or country fixed effects. This advantage, an approximately 2% increase in game outcome, suggests that traveling has a positive effect on performance.

OBJECTIVE To examine the influence of competing voices or noise on the comprehension of spoken narratives for young adults. DESIGN First, an intelligibility assessment of the target narratives was conducted to establish a signal-to-noise ratio ensuring accurate initial speech recognition. Then, narrative comprehension for two target types (fixed and varied target talker) was measured in four listening conditions (quiet, one-talker speech, speech babble, speech-shaped noise). After hearing target narratives in each listening condition, participants completed a visual recognition memory task that assessed the comprehension of the narrative materials at three levels of representation (surface form, propositional, event model). STUDY SAMPLE Seventy adults (18-32 years of age). RESULTS Narrative comprehension results revealed a main effect of listening condition at the event model level, indicating poorer narrative memory of described situations for all noise conditions compared to quiet. Increased positive responses to thematically consistent but situationally "wrong" memory probes drove this effect. No other significant effects were observed. CONCLUSION Despite near-perfect speech recognition, background noise negatively influenced aspects of spoken narrative comprehension and memory. Specifically, noise did not disrupt memory for what was said (surface form and propositional memory), but only memory for what was talked about (event model memory).

Since President Rodrigo Duterte launched his war on drugs campaign in 2016, there has been a growing scholarship documenting the empirical analyses of the policy’s drug-related harms. Eighteen Fili...

Directing ocular fixations toward a target assists the planning and control of visually guided actions. In far aiming tasks, the quiet eye, an instance of premovement gaze anchoring, has been extensively studied as a key performance variable. However, theories of quiet eye are yet to establish the exact functional role of the location and duration of the fixation. The present work used immersive virtual reality to manipulate key parameters of the quiet eye-location (Experiment 1) and duration (Experiment 2)-to test competing theoretical predictions about their importance. Across two preregistered experiments, novice participants (n = 127) completed a series of golf putts while their eye movements, putting accuracy, and putting kinematics were recorded. In Experiment 1, participants' premovement fixation was cued to locations on the ball, near the ball, and far from the ball. In Experiment 2, long and short quiet eye durations were induced using auditory tones as cues to movement phases. Linear mixed effects models indicated that manipulations of location and duration had little effect on performance or movement kinematics. The findings suggest that, for novices, the spatial and temporal parameters of the final fixation may not be critical for movement preprogramming and may instead reflect attentional control or movement inhibition functions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Background and Objectives: Non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) technology compresses and shifts higher frequencies into a lower frequency area that has better residual hearing. Because consonants are uttered in the high-frequency area, NLFC could provide better speech understanding. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical effectiveness of NLFC technology on the perception of speech and music in patients with high-frequency hearing loss.Subjects and Methods: Twelve participants with high-frequency hearing loss were tested in a counter-balanced order, and had two weeks of daily experience with NLFC set on/off prior to testing. Performance was repeatedly evaluated with consonant tests in quiet and noise environments, speech perception in noise, music perception and acceptableness of sound quality rating tasks. Additionally, two questionnaires (the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit and the Korean version of the International Outcome Inventory-Hearing Aids) were administered.Results: Consonant and speech perception improved with hearing aids (NLFC on/off conditions), but there was no significant difference between NLFC on and off states. Music perception performances revealed no notable difference among unaided and NLFC on and off states. The benefits and satisfaction ratings between NLFC on and off conditions were also not significantly different, based on questionnaires, however great individual variability preferences were noted.Conclusions: Speech perception as well as music perception both in quiet and noise environments was similar between NLFC on and off states, indicating that real world benefits from NLFC technology may be limited in Korean adult hearing aid users.

Feedback is substantial in communication process. Consequently, due to absence of two-way communication in classroom, teaching and learning are not productive and prolific in most of Indian institutions. Secondly, talk or interaction is a significant medium of students’ assessment and by listening to what they have to say teachers support their learning. Several studies conclude that classroom discussions are often dominated by a small number of students while others remain silent and quiet. The study was precisely conducted to find out the factors or barriers contributing to students’ reluctance to communicate in the classrooms. The case study method was employed and total 35-student was interviewed. The study concludes that dialogue or communication between teachers and students is a vital part of the education process and those students who do not speak in the classrooms are disadvantaged. The study found that psychological, emotional, practical, social attitude and previous school education barriers was the salient that responsible to students communication behavior in the classrooms. These barriers must be removed to ensure the participation of quiet students to make active role in education. Keywords : Communication, Barriers, classroom, students, teachers etc.

The duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction postulates that two distinct forms of auditory distraction can be distinguished by whether or not they can be cognitively controlled. While the interference-by-process component of auditory distraction is postulated to be automatic and independent of cognitive control, the stimulus-aspecific attention capture by auditory deviants and the stimulus-specific attentional diversion by auditorily presented distractor sentences should be suppressed by increased task engagement. Here we test whether incentive-induced changes in task engagement affect the disruption of serial recall by auditory deviants (Experiment 1) and distractor sentences (Experiment 2). Monetary incentives substantially affected recall performance in both experiments. However, the incentive-induced changes in task engagement had only limited effects on auditory distraction. In Experiment 2, increased task engagement was associated with a small decrease of distraction relative to a quiet condition, but strong effects of auditory distraction on performance persisted in conditions of high task engagement in both experiments. Most importantly, and in contrast to the predictions of the duplex-mechanism account, the effects of stimulus-aspecific attention capture (Experiment 1) and stimulus-specific attentional diversion (Experiment 2) remained unaffected by incentive-induced changes in task engagement. These findings are consistent with an automatic-capture account according to which only the processes responsible for the deliberate memorization of the target items are dependent on controlled mental effort while the attention capture by auditory deviants and the attentional diversion by distractor speech are largely automatic.

Purpose This study discusses the ways in which the presence of background noise may adversely affect bilingual students' ability to repeat speech, specifically, whether the presence of background noise increases lexical, grammatical, omission, and other errors on the AzBio Sentence Test. Method Participants consisted of 15 monolingual English (first language) speakers and 41 bilingual (second language [L2]) speakers from Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean language groups, ranging from students who learned English after the age of 4 years to adulthood. Participants completed the AzBio Sentence Test in both quiet and background noise environments. A language analysis was conducted, and errors were classified under categories of lexical, grammatical, omissions, and other. Results The results of this study show that L2 speakers made more lexical, grammatical, omissions, and other errors than first language speakers on the AzBio Sentence Test. In background noise, all bilingual language groups made more errors than monolinguals. Portuguese speakers notably made more omissions than other language groups. This study also shows that participants who were introduced to English at a younger age made fewer errors. Conclusions In conclusion, our results corroborate previous research, indicating that bilingual speakers have more difficulty accurately interpreting speech in the presence of background noise. These findings have implications for classroom instruction considering the statistically higher percentage of omissions made by L2 speakers.

Background Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) often requires respondents to complete surveys in the moment to report real-time experiences. Because EMA may seem disruptive or intrusive, respondents may not complete surveys as directed in certain circumstances. Purpose This article aims to determine the effect of environmental characteristics on the likelihood of instances where respondents do not complete EMA surveys (referred to as survey incompletion), and to estimate the impact of survey incompletion on EMA self-report data. Research Design An observational study. Study Sample Ten adults hearing aid (HA) users. Data Collection and Analysis Experienced, bilateral HA users were recruited and fit with study HAs. The study HAs were equipped with real-time data loggers, an algorithm that logged the data generated by HAs (e.g., overall sound level, environment classification, and feature status including microphone mode and amount of gain reduction). The study HAs were also connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone app, which collected the real-time data logging data as well as presented the participants with EMA surveys about their listening environments and experiences. The participants were sent out to wear the HAs and complete surveys for 1 week. Real-time data logging was triggered when participants completed surveys and when participants ignored or snoozed surveys. Data logging data were used to estimate the effect of environmental characteristics on the likelihood of survey incompletion, and to predict participants' responses to survey questions in the instances of survey incompletion. Results Across the 10 participants, 715 surveys were completed and survey incompletion occurred 228 times. Mixed effects logistic regression models indicated that survey incompletion was more likely to happen in the environments that were less quiet and contained more speech, noise, and machine sounds, and in the environments wherein directional microphones and noise reduction algorithms were enabled. The results of survey response prediction further indicated that the participants could have reported more challenging environments and more listening difficulty in the instances of survey incompletion. However, the difference in the distribution of survey responses between the observed responses and the combined observed and predicted responses was small. Conclusion The present study indicates that EMA survey incompletion occurs systematically. Although survey incompletion could bias EMA self-report data, the impact is likely to be small.

The quiet ego refers to a self-identity that is balanced and growth-oriented in its stance toward the self and others. As a relatively new construct, its validity has been examined in domains related to balance, compassion, and self-control, it has not been examined in other domains that appear to have conceptual overlap such as emotional intelligence (EI), a construct entailing both ability EI (construed as cognitive ability) and trait EI (construed as self-perception). This pre-registered study (N = 300) first examined the quiet ego’s construct validity in the domain of EI using a confirmatory factor analysis approach, and then investigated its associations with subjective well-being and psychological stress from the angle of EI using path models. Results showed that the quiet ego was positively associated with both ability and trait EI, thereby establishing its validity in this domain. Mediation analyses revealed trait EI mediated the relationship between the quiet ego and increased subjective well-being and decreased stress. Serial mediation analyses further revealed that the link between the quiet ego and trait EI was mediated by mindfulness such that the quiet ego transmitted its effects to subjective well-being and stress first via mindfulness and then trait EI. In contrast, there was no evidence that ability EI mediated the relationship between the quiet ego and subjective well-being or stress.

Background Clear speech is an effective communication strategy to improve speech intelligibility. While clear speech in several languages has been shown to significantly benefit intelligibility among listeners with differential hearing sensitivities and across environments of different noise levels, whether these results apply to Korean clear speech is unclear on account of the language's unique acoustic and linguistic characteristics. Purpose This study aimed to measure the intelligibility benefits of Korean clear speech relative to those of conversational speech among listeners with normal hearing and hearing loss. Research Design We used a mixed-model design that included both within-subject (effects of speaking style and listening condition) and between-subject (hearing status) elements. Data Collection and Analysis We compared the rationalized arcsine unit scores, which were transformed from the number of keywords recognized and repeated, between clear and conversational speech in groups with different hearing sensitivities across five listening conditions (quiet and 10, 5, 0, and –5 dB signal-to-noise ratio) using a mixed model analysis. Results The intelligibility scores of Korean clear speech were significantly higher than those of conversational speech under most listening conditions in all groups; the former yielded increases of 6 to 32 rationalized arcsine units in intelligibility. Conclusion The present study provides information on the actual benefits of Korean clear speech for listeners with varying hearing sensitivities. Audiologists or hearing professionals may use this information to establish communication strategies for Korean patients with hearing loss.

SUMMARYWe consider some advances in relational and affective neuroscience and related disciplines that attempt to resolve some fundamental aspects of the mind–brain problem. We consider the key role of affect in generating consciousness and in meeting our essential survival needs; the neural correlates of relating; how self and other are represented in the brain and awareness of self and other is generated through interoceptive predictive processes. We describe some leading models of the generation and purpose of consciousness, linking theories of affective and cognitive consciousness. We discuss psychiatric and psychotherapeutic innovations arising from this research, new integrated biopsychosocial interventions and the obstacles to be overcome in applying these models in practice.

Background and Objectives: Top-down restoration of distorted speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of speech in noise, maybe a useful tool to understand robustness of perception in adverse listening situations. However, the relationship between phonemic restoration and speech perception in noise is not empirically clear.Subjects and Methods: 20 adults (40-55 years) with normal audiometric findings were part of the study. Sentence perception in noise performance was studied with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to estimate the SNR with 50% score. Performance was also measured for sentences interrupted with silence and for those interrupted by speech noise at -10, -5, 0, and 5 dB SNRs. The performance score in the noise interruption condition was subtracted by quiet interruption condition to determine the phonemic restoration magnitude.Results: Fairly robust improvements in speech intelligibility was found when the sentences were interrupted with speech noise instead of silence. Improvement with increasing noise levels was non-monotonic and reached a maximum at -10 dB SNR. Significant correlation between speech perception in noise performance and phonemic restoration of sentences interrupted with -10 dB SNR speech noise was found.Conclusions: It is possible that perception of speech in noise is associated with top-down processing of speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of interrupted speech. More research with a larger sample size is indicated since the restoration is affected by the type of speech material and noise used, age, working memory, and linguistic proficiency, and has a large individual variability.

Objectives The objective of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity and reliability of one subjective (rating scale) and three objective (dual-task paradigm, pupillometry, and skin conductance response amplitude) measures of listening effort across multiple signal to noise ratios (SNRs). Design Twenty adults with normal hearing attended two sessions and listened to sentences presented in quiet and in stationary noise at three different SNRs: 0, -3, and -5 dB. Listening effort was assessed by examining change in reaction time (dual-task paradigm), change in peak to peak pupil diameter (pupillometry), and change in mean skin conductance response amplitude; self-reported listening effort on a scale from 0 to 100 was also evaluated. Responses were averaged within each SNR and based on three word recognition ability categories (≤50%, 51% to 71%, and >71%) across all SNRs. Measures were considered reliable if there were no significant changes between sessions, and intraclass correlation coefficients were a minimum of 0.40. Effect sizes were calculated to compare the sensitivity of the measures. Results Intraclass correlation coefficient values indicated fair-to-moderate reliability for all measures while individual measurement sensitivity was variable. Self-reports were sensitive to listening effort but were less reliable, given that subjective effort was greater during the dual task than either of the physiologic measures. The dual task was sensitive to a narrow range of word recognition abilities but was less reliable as it exhibited a global decrease in reaction time across sessions. Pupillometry was consistently sensitive and reliable to changes in listening effort. Skin conductance response amplitude was not sensitive or reliable while the participants listened to the sentences. Skin conductance response amplitude during the verbal response was sensitive to poor (≤50%) speech recognition abilities; however, it was less reliable as there was a significant change in amplitude across sessions. Conclusions In this study, pupillometry was the most sensitive and reliable objective measure of listening effort. Intersession variability significantly influenced the other objective measures of listening effort, which suggests challenges for cross-study comparability. Therefore, intraclass correlation coefficients combined with other statistical tests more fully describe the reliability of measures of listening effort across multiple difficulties. Minimizing intersession variability will increase measurement sensitivity. Further work toward standardized methods and analysis will strengthen our understanding of the reliability and sensitivity of measures of listening effort and better facilitate cross-modal and cross-study comparisons.

VDS Training advisor, Kirsty Sturman, offers advice on how to get the quiet clients to open up and how to conclude the consultation without appearing rude.

The COVID-19 lockdown has given us time to reconsider some of the approaches we use for generating research ideas. We propose a set of three critical “E” processes—extract, expose, and evaluate—for an individual researcher to replicate team brainstorming.

To validate the Russian matrix sentence test (RUMatrix) for the assessment of speech recognition in quiet and in noise in clinical praxis. The effect of hearing impairment, age, and masking-noise level on speech recognition was examined.All participants underwent pure tone audiometry, a monosyllabic speech test in quiet, and speech recognition measurements with RUMatrix in quiet (SRTOne hundred and forty-two listeners divided into four groups: 1. Young normal-hearing listeners, 2. Older normal-hearing listeners, 3. Young hearing-impaired listeners, and 4. Older hearing-impaired listeners.Significant differences between groups of listeners were found in the SRTRuMatrix is a reliable speech recognition assessment tool with a high sensitivity and validity for the main aspects of hearing impairment.

OBJECTIVES Understanding speech in adverse listening environments is challenging for older adults. Individual differences in pure tone averages and working memory are known to be critical indicators of speech in noise comprehension. Recent studies have suggested that tracking of the speech envelope in cortical oscillations

The present study investigates the effect of signal degradation on perceived listening effort in children with hearing loss listening in a simulated class-room context. It also examines the associations between perceived listening effort, passage comprehension performance and executive functioning.Twenty-four children (aged 06:03-13:00 years) with hearing impairment using cochlear implant (CI) and/or hearing aids (HA) participated. The children made ratings of perceived listening effort after completing an auditory passage comprehension task. All children performed the task in four different listening conditions: listening to a typical (i.e. normal) voice in quiet, to a dysphonic voice in quiet, to a typical voice in background noise and to a dysphonic voice in background noise. In addition, the children completed a task assessing executive function.Both voice quality and background noise increased perceived listening effort in children with CI/HA, but no interaction with executive function was seen.Since increased listening effort seems to be a consequence of increased cognitive resource spending, it is likely that less resources will be available for these children not only to comprehend but also to learn in challenging listening environments such as classrooms.

This article examines the potentiality, acceptability and ethical considerations of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for supporting pupils’ mental well-being in a junior school. To date, research has predominantly focused on the psychological or behavioural benefits of MBIs rather than broader and more philosophical issues of implementation. The findings reported in this article are positioned alongside recent debates critiquing the neoliberal agenda of ‘privatising’ well-being and downplaying the role of the institution and its cultural context. The study synthesises the perspectives of pupils and teachers to provide more in-depth insights into the everyday realities of MBIs in educational contexts. The study highlights and critically examines the inherent ethical dilemmas of implementing MBIs in contexts that include vulnerable and conscripted audiences in particular. As such, this article argues the case for those individuals involved in developing, administering and/or advocating MBIs to acknowledge these ethical dilemmas with greater transparency and integrity and consider the aims of MBIs in relation to their potential instrumental or holistic possibilities and processes of ‘schoolification’.

Processing speech can be slow and effortful for children, especially in adverse listening conditions, such as the classroom. This can have detrimental effects on children’s academic achievement. We therefore asked whether primary school children’s speech processing could be made faster and less effortful via the presentation of visual speech cues (speaker’s facial movements), and whether any audio-visual benefit would be modulated by the presence of noise or by characteristics of individual participants. A phoneme monitoring task with concurrent pupillometry was used to measure 7- to 11-year-old children’s speech processing speed and effort, with and without visual cues, in both quiet and noise. Results demonstrated that visual cues to speech can facilitate children’s speech processing, but that these benefits may also be subject to variability according to children’s motivation. Children showed faster processing and reduced effort when visual cues were available, regardless of listening condition. However, examination of individual variability revealed that the reduction in effort was driven by the children who performed better on a measure of phoneme isolation (used to quantify how difficult they found the phoneme monitoring task).

Introdução: Medidas psicofisiológicas do sistema nervoso autônomo em resposta a tarefas auditivas podem fornecer um meio de quantificar os efeitos do esforço auditivo. Objetivo: Comparar a modulação parassimpática da frequência cardíaca em situações de escuta distintas e determinar se a variabilidade da frequência cardíaca (VFC) é um índice psicofisiológico sensível para mensurar o esforço auditivo. Método: Estudo piloto, observacional, transversal e prospectivo. Participaram 14 adultos normo-ouvintes, de ambos os sexos e com idade entre 18 e 30 anos. Estes responderam a anamnese e realizaram audiometria tonal limiar para verificação de limiares auditivos. Para o registro da VFC, colocou-se a cinta do cardiofrequencímetro na região do processo xifoide e este registro foi coletado por 10 minutos para três situações distintas: “repouso”, “recuperação pós-reconhecimento de sentenças no silêncio” e “recuperação pós-reconhecimento de sentenças no ruído”. O reconhecimento de sentenças foi realizado utilizando-se duas listas de sentenças, de forma randomizada, binaural, nas situações de escuta silêncio e na relação sinal/ruído de -5 dB e, também foi registrada VFC por um período de dois minutos. Aplicou-se o teste de ANOVA de medidas repetidas seguido pelo pós-teste de Bonferroni para comparar o índice de RMSSD nos diferentes momentos de registro da VFC. Resultados: A análise estatística demonstrou que não houve diferença significante do registro da VFC nos diferentes momentos, inclusive durante a tarefa de reconhecimento de sentenças no ruído, considerada a tarefa mais árdua. Conclusão: Para esta amostra, o registro da VFC não foi considerado um índice sensível para a mensuração do esforço auditivo.