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Purpose: This study focuses on 7- to 9-year-old children attending primary school in Swedish areas of low socioeconomic status, where most children's school language is their second language. The aim was to better understand what factors influence these children's narrative listening comprehension both in an ideal listening condition (in quiet) and for the primary school classroom, a typical listening condition (with multitalker babble noise). Method: A total of 86 typically developing 7- to 9-year-olds performed a narrative listening comprehension test (Lyssna, Förstå och Minnas [LFM]; English translation: Listen, Comprehend, and Remember) in two listening conditions: quiet and multitalker babble noise. They also performed the crosslinguistic nonword repetition test and a digit span backwards (DSB) test. A predictive statistical model including these factors, the children's degree of school language exposure, parental education level, and age was derived. Results: Listening condition had the strongest predictive value for LFM performance, followed by school language exposure and nonword repetition accuracy. Parental education level was also a significant predictor. There was a significant three-way interaction effect between listening condition, age, and DSB performance. Conclusions: Multitalker babble noise has a negative effect on children's narrative listening comprehension. The effect of multitalker babble noise could be explained by age differences in the ability to allocate working memory capacity during the narrative listening comprehension task, suggesting that younger children may be more vulnerable for missing information when listening in background noise than their older peers.

The composer, author, and teacher, John Cage, was exercised by our 'inability' to truly listen when approaching sound. In exploring the influences on Cage's avant-garde style, specifically the spiritual discipline found in both Zen Buddhism and Chance operations, this paper attempts to distinguish his philosophy (and use) of "silence" and "chance" as an aesthetic pedagogy. In accordance with Dewey's aesthetic theory and Shusterman's Somaesthetics, resolving the inability to listen is aesthetically conceived as somatic 'attuning' to the occurrence of chance sounds in the ambience of the world. By maintaining Cage's spiritually informed approach as a compositional framework, this paper highlights how his philosophy of silence is pedagogically illustrative of the "active" engagement we can have with the world. This approach is most apparent in Cage's "4'33"," where the 'musicalizing' of everyday sounds erodes the boundaries between art and life, creating a continuity with the world. Somewhat problematically, Cage attempted to make this possible by channelling experience into a state of immersion, unifying art and life by 'letting go' of subjectivity. But as is shown by the Fluxus artists who were inspired by Cage's teachings, the possibility for negotiating Cage's terms brings with it an opportunity to theoretically reflect on the educational processes that underpin Cage's approach to sound.

This article considers the related concepts of 'rehearsal' [Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. 2013. "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study." Brooklyn: Minor Compositions] and 'catastrophe' [Stengers, Isabelle. 2015. "In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism." Translated by Andrew Goffey. London: Open Humanities Press] as activism, focussing upon eco-somatic drama processes engaged through "In Your Arms" (IYA). This participatory arts project for babies and their primary caregivers was co-created in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, by a four-person artist ensemble, ten pre-crawling babies, and their mothers. Multi-modalities were used, including improvisatory movement scores, natural props, sound-making and listening practices. The article suggests new ways to consider drama activity at a micro-sensorial scale, offering practices that cultivate environmental attunement and care from the very first months of life.

In South Africa, education is considered a basic right and our constitution calls for accessible educational contexts which ought to be conducive for learning. Even though schools are meant to be places in which learning can occur, poor classroom acoustics may threaten that basic right to education. The aim of this study was, therefore, to explore and understand how teachers in special needs schools managed classroom acoustics in their efforts to enhance learning. We report on a qualitative study using semi-structured face-to-face interviews with teachers from 2 special needs schools in Johannesburg in the Gauteng province of South Africa. A non-probability purposive sampling strategy was used to recruit participants. The results of this study confirm that classrooms in special needs schools may not be acoustically sound spaces which teachers feel may compromise effective learning. As a result, teachers reported using a variety of active and passive strategies to manage classroom acoustics in order to enhance learning. The results of this study contribute to existing knowledge on the importance of the strategies used by teachers in managing classroom acoustics. Further research is required to determine the efficacy of these and other strategies used by teachers in special needs schools.

The purpose of this study is to review the postgraduate theses on science/physics education in Turkey to guide the teaching of the sound concept. Although the theses examined within the scope of this study belong to a certain region, the previous literature shows us that the learning difficulties/misconceptions are generally independent of culture. Thirty-three theses in the database of The Council of Higher Education Thesis Center were analyzed inductively in the semi-systematic review process. For this, the stages of content analyses were used: Elimination and coding, placing them in themes, ensuring reliability and validity were followed respectively. Unit of analyses was conclusions of the theses and suggestions of the theses. In conclusion, both conventional and contemporary approaches have a positive effect on achievement or conceptual change on the sound concept. On the other hand, students and teachers/ candidates, in general, cannot relate their knowledge of sound to daily life, their level of knowledge is inadequate, and they have misconceptions/errors and confusions. It is beneficial to consider this situation in education. The most important output of this study is the lists of possible misconceptions or confusion about the concept of sound. Teachers and researchers can use these lists in their lessons or research. [Note: The page range (257-278) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 257-275.]

This article revisits Lee and Mok (2018) and examines how the Cantonese learners in the study produced second language (L2) Japanese short vs. long consonants which are absent in their first language (L1). Specifically, our goal is to find out whether these learners were substituting real geminates (i.e. long consonants) with the improvised strategy of an unreleased stop coda + homorganic initial consonant sequence (like in the phrase "cat tail"), which would not have been detectable with the durational ratios in the original study. We analysed the mean intensity of the words "sassa," "sesse," and "sosso," to investigate whether the learners were producing a [t]+/s/ cluster, presumably drawn from their L1. The results showed that the beginner group were indeed using this strategy, whereas the advanced learners were largely producing a genuinely geminated /s/ akin to the native speakers. The use of this transitional strategy was also speech-rate dependent, with more cases of /t/-insertion in slower speech for both learner groups. We conclude that (1) although having L1 false geminates does not enable beginners to readily acquire genuine L2 geminates, the latter can be learned after enough exposure, and (2) during this transition, Cantonese learners can draw on L1 phonotactic knowledge to improvise creative and effective strategies to attain L2 durational targets.

Two acoustic studies of voice onset time (VOT) in sibilant-stop (ST) consonant clusters, produced by first language (L1) speakers of Polish, are presented. In the first, a baseline study of L1 Polish comparing ST clusters with initial singleton stops, a small degree of VOT shortening after /s/ was found for /p/, but not /t/. The second study compared ST productions by L1 Polish speakers of second language (L2) English across two levels of proficiency, speaking in both L1 and L2. Rather than shortening post-/s/ VOT, as is common in L1 English, speakers from both proficiency groups exhibited longer VOT in their L2 than in their L1. These results are consistent with the claim that Polish learners of English mistakenly apply the long VOT of L2 English singleton fortis stops in the post-/s/ position. A phonological interpretation of the results within the Onset Prominence framework is provided.

Sound is a very omnipresent physical phenomenon that plays a crucial role in our daily lives. It is essential for verbal communication and helps us orient ourselves. Children are especially affected by sound and its presence in their daily lives. This circumstance, and the subject-specific interesting facets of the topic of sound, make this particularly interesting for the classroom. In order to provide effective sound education, it's important to understand how children perceive sound. This research aims to explore the ways in which primary school children experience sound. The inquiry conducted of 24 interviews with primary school children, with a focus on the propagation of sound. Various experiments were integrated into these interviews in order to provide a child-friendly approach to this rather abstract topic. The interviews were analysed phenomenographically. The focus on sound propagation allowed the children to express their understanding of the nature of sound. The various experiments that addressed different levels of awareness (black box, Schlieren setup) were also beneficial in this regard. The results showed that primary school children already have a wide range of ways of experiencing the nature of sound.

Our study proposes the use of a free classification task for investigating the dimensions used by listeners in their perception of nonnative sounds and for predicting the perceptual discriminability of nonnative contrasts. In a free classification task, participants freely group auditory stimuli based on their perceived similarity. The results can be used to predict discriminability and can be compared to various acoustic or phonological dimensions to determine the relevant cues for listeners. The viability of this method was examined for both a segmental contrast (German vowels) and a nonsegmental contrast (Finnish phonemic length). Perceptual similarity data from the free classification task accurately predicted discriminability in an oddity task and separately provided rich information on how the perceptual space is shaped. These results suggest that a free classification task and related analyses are informative and replicable methods for examining nonnative speech perception.

Research suggests new foreign language (FL) words are learned more easily if their phonology follows the phonotactic rules of the native language. Very little is known, however, about the impact of orthography on FL learning. This study investigated the cognitive mechanisms supporting the learning of words with familiar and unfamiliar orthographies. Participants took part in learning and meaning recall tasks, as well as a series of cognitive tasks (short-term and working memory tasks and tasks assessing their phonological and acoustic abilities). Orthographic and phonological familiarity judgments were collected using another sample of participants. Using a mixed-effects model, the results showed that orthographic familiarity impacted FL word learning even after controlling for phonological familiarity. However, there were no interactions with cognitive abilities.

Fetal hearing experiences shape the linguistic and musical preferences of neonates. From the very first moment after birth, newborns prefer their native language, recognize their mother's voice, and show a greater responsiveness to lullabies presented during pregnancy. Yet, the neural underpinnings of this experience inducing plasticity have remained elusive. Here we recorded the frequency-following response (FFR), an auditory evoked potential elicited to periodic complex sounds, to show that prenatal music exposure is associated to enhanced neural encoding of speech stimuli periodicity, which relates to the perceptual experience of pitch. FFRs were recorded in a sample of 60 healthy neonates born at term and aged 12-72 hours. The sample was divided into two groups according to their prenatal musical exposure (29 daily musically exposed; 31 not-daily musically exposed). Prenatal exposure was assessed retrospectively by a questionnaire in which mothers reported how often they sang or listened to music through loudspeakers during the last trimester of pregnancy. The FFR was recorded to either a /da/ or an /oa/ speech-syllable stimulus. Analyses were centered on stimuli sections of identical duration (113 ms) and fundamental frequency (F[subscript 0] = 113 Hz). Neural encoding of stimuli periodicity was quantified as the FFR spectral amplitude at the stimulus F[subscript 0]. Data revealed that newborns exposed daily to music exhibit larger spectral amplitudes at F[subscript 0] as compared to not-daily musically-exposed newborns, regardless of the eliciting stimulus. Our results suggest that prenatal music exposure facilitates the tuning to human speech fundamental frequency, which may support early language processing and acquisition.

While our perceptual experience seems to unfold continuously over time, episodic memory preserves distinct events for storage and recollection. Previous work shows that stability in encoding context serves to temporally bind individual items into sequential composite events. This phenomenon has been almost exclusively studied using visual and spatial memory paradigms. Here we adapt these paradigms to test the role of speaker regularity for event segmentation of complex auditory information. The results of our auditory paradigm replicate the findings in other sensory modalities--finding greater within-event temporal memory for items within speaker-bound events and greater source memory for items at speaker or event transitions. The task we use significantly extends the ecological validity of past paradigms by allowing participants to encode the stimuli without any suggestions on the part of the experimenter. This unique property of our design reveals that, while memory performance is strongly dependent on self-reported mnemonic strategy, behavioral effects associated with event segmentation are robust to changes in mnemonic strategy. Finally, we consider the effect of serial position on segmentation effects during encoding and present a modeling approach to estimate the independent contribution of event segmentation. These findings provide several lines of evidence suggesting that contextual stability in perceptual features drives segmentation during word listening and supports a modality-independent role for mechanisms involved in event segmentation.

Age, babble noise, and working memory have been found to affect the recognition of emotional prosody based on non-tonal languages, yet little is known about how exactly they influence tone-language-speaking children's recognition of emotional prosody. In virtue of the tectonic theory of Stroop effects and the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model, this study aimed to explore the effects of age, babble noise, and working memory on Mandarin-speaking children's understanding of emotional prosody. Sixty Mandarin-speaking children aged three to eight years and 20 Mandarin-speaking adults participated in this study. They were asked to recognize the happy or sad prosody of short sentences with different semantics (negative, neutral, or positive) produced by a male speaker. The results revealed that the prosody-semantics congruity played a bigger role in children than in adults for accurate recognition of emotional prosody in quiet, but a less important role in children compared with adults in noise. Furthermore, concerning the recognition accuracy of emotional prosody, the effect of working memory on children was trivial despite the listening conditions. But for adults, it was very prominent in babble noise. The findings partially supported the tectonic theory of Stroop effects which highlights the perceptual enhancement generated by cross-channel congruity, and the ELU model which underlines the importance of working memory in speech processing in noise. These results suggested that the development of emotional prosody recognition is a complex process influenced by the interplay among age, background noise, and working memory.

Distracted users can fail to correctly distinguish the differences between legitimate and malicious emails or search engine results. Mobile phone users can have a more challenging time identifying malicious content due to the smaller screen size and the limited security features in mobile phone applications. Thus, the main goal of this research study was to design, develop, and validate a set of field experiments to assess user's judgment when exposed to two types of simulated social engineering attacks: phishing and Potentially Malicious Search Engine Results (PMSER), based on the interaction of the environment (distracting vs. non-distracting) and type of device used (mobile vs. computer). In this paper, we provide the results from the Delphi methodology research we conducted using an expert panel consisting of 28 cybersecurity Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who participated, out of 60 cybersecurity experts invited. Half of the SMEs were with over 10 years of experience in cybersecurity, the rest around five years. SMEs were asked to validate two sets of experimental tasks (phishing & PMSER) as specified in RQ1. The SMEs were then asked to identify physical and Audio/Visual (A/V) environmental factors for distracting and non-distracting environments. About 50% of the SMEs found that an airport was the most distracting environment for mobile phone and computer users. About 35.7% of the SMEs also found that a home environment was the least distracting environment for users, with an office setting coming into a close second place. About 67.9% of the SMEs chose "all" for the most distracting A/V distraction level, which included continuous background noise, visual distractions, and distracting/loud music. About 46.4% of the SMEs chose "all" for the least distracting A/V level, including a quiet environment, relaxing background music, and no visual distractions. The SMEs were then asked to evaluate a randomization table. This was important for RQ2 to set up the eight experimental protocols to maintain the validity of the proposed experiment. About 89.3% indicated a strong consensus that we should keep the randomization as it is. The SMEs were also asked whether we should keep, revise, or replace the number of questions for each mini-IQ test to three questions each. About 75% of the SMEs responded that we should keep the number of mini-IQ questions to three. Finally, the SMEs were asked to evaluate the proposed procedures for the pilot testing and experimental research phases conducted in the future. About 96.4% of the SMEs selected to keep the first pilot testing procedure. For second and third pilot testing procedures, the SMEs responded with an 89.3% strong consensus to keep the procedures. For the first experimental procedure, a strong consensus of 92.9% of the SMEs recommended keeping the procedure. Finally, for the third experimental procedure, there was an 85.7% majority to keep the procedure. The expert panel was used to validate the proposed experimental procedures and recommended adjustments. The conclusions, study limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Students with visual impairment have the same range of mental abilities as their sighted peers. However, these students experience academic failure, especially in courses in which visual themes are dominant, as they cannot use their sense of sight to process information sufficiently. One of the courses that students with visual impairment have the most difficulty with is science as it contains many visual materials. This study aimed to determine whether students with visual impairment can learn the concept of sound insulation using tactile documents that highlight their haptic senses. The study was implemented in a state secondary school for the visually impaired, and 4 students with visual impairment (blind) participated in the activity. It was observed that all students actively participated during the exercise. The students stated that the practice was fun, instructive, and suitable for teaching the targeted concept.

This paper presents an application of the Kalman filter in signal processing in instrumentation systems when the conditions of the environment generate a large amount of interference for the acquisition of signals from measurement systems. The unwanted interferences make important use of the instrumentation system resources and do not represent useful information under any aspect. A simulation is presented using the Matlab tool, which remarkably facilitates the information processing so that the corresponding actions are taken according to the information obtained, taking advantage of the current resources offered by the embedded systems and the required measurements are obtained with enough accuracy.

STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) education has received great attention in recent years not only for promoting interest and learning in these areas but also for encouraging children and young people to pursue careers in them. This research explored the effects of a STEM program in developing the primary pre-service teachers' Content Knowledge (CK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) about sound. A qualitative and interpretative study analyzed the impact of a STEM program on the CK and PCK of 18 pre-service primary teachers that were attending a master's degree program in a Portuguese higher education institution. The data was collected from their lesson plans, field notes, a focus group interview, and participants assignments throughout the STEM activities carried out. Findings revealed several scientific misconceptions and weaknesses in the participants' PCK. Nevertheless, there was a clear positive impact on pre-service teachers' CK and PCK, specifically regarding the principles underlying STEM integration that was proposed in the conceptual framework.

As the majority of people in the world now live in cities, it makes sense to question the state of urban environmental education and how it could be developed going forward. In this article, we suggest a way forward based on the essays written by Finnish university students. The students reflected on their relationship with an environment that is meaningful to them. In the essays selected for this case study (n = 25), the built environment of Helsinki--the capital of Finland--and its characteristics are in focus. In this qualitative research, inductive content analysis was used for processing the essays. Many students described the connections between urban nature and built environments, but the results also show that the built environment is especially significant because of its social and cultural aspects. Students described the importance of social bonding and how meeting different sorts of people supports their acceptance of diverse perspectives. Personal experiences and meanings attached to the city, as well as their lack, were mentioned; that is, without these personal bonds, meaningful relations to urban environments cannot be developed. Architecture, aesthetics, and soundscapes were also mentioned. In addition, it was expressed that feeling safe in the built environment is important. In urban environmental education, it is therefore important to pay attention to the social and cultural aspects, too, and not just to the ecological dimension. It is crucial that children and young people have access to the city in order to construct their personal relationships with the built environment.

The new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) that appeared suddenly has permeated our daily lives and changed our way of life. In the field of education, education is being conducted in a non-face-to-face teaching method to prevent the spread of coronavirus. In the end, e-Learning, a new educational and training system that can provide a lifelong education environment in the 21st century information society, is increasing in use in the field of education. The biggest advantage of the online education system is that it provides an environment in which you can learn the necessary contents anytime, anywhere. However, there are cases in which the learning effect is reduced because various learning support is not available in the online space due to the sudden change of the educational environment due to the COVID-19. Therefore, in this thesis, a study was conducted to analyze the learning effect of online education with voice signals for college students who are receiving education through an online education environment. To this end, the learning effect was classified into a group saying that the learning effect increased and a group that decreased due to online education, and the voices of the subjects in each group were collected. As a result of the experiment, the results of the vocal cord vibration (Pitch), Degree of voice breaks, Jitter and Shimmer were consistent among the elements of voice signal analysis between two groups.

Variability in the form of article (i.e., a and the) omissions and stressing has been attributed to a mismatch between first (L1) and second language (L2) prosodic and syntactic structures. An overlap between the L1 and L2 systems, on the other hand, is expected to contribute to native-like article productions. This case study aims to explore the role of L1 prosodic structure (Turkish, Spanish and English) and syntactic environment (nouns with and without adjectives) on article productions of two end-state L2 speakers and one Australian-English native speaker. The data consisted of a sentence imitation task and spontaneous speech recordings of these three speakers. Article use patterns in the data were coded as supplied and omitted, and indefinite article durations were excised and measured using PRAAT. The findings suggest that the presence of an adjective in the noun clause increases cognitive demand, since irrespective of the L1 background, all the speakers had longer indefinite article durations in contexts with an adjective. Second, the Turkish speaker, whose L1 has a different prosodic and syntactic structure from Spanish and English for encoding definiteness, had higher rates of article stressing and omissions in contexts with an adjective. Third, L1 prosodic constraints can be responsible for article stressing and omissions in end-state L2 speech since only the prosodic transfer hypothesis predicts a difference in article durations between the two syntactic environments within the interlanguage of the same speaker. Despite long years of exposure to and frequent daily use of the L2, the persistent difficulty in article productions, as reported in this paper, may imply the importance of age of acquisition in overriding certain L1 prosodic effects in acquiring an L2.

In this study, the usability of lip trill, yawn-sigh and tongue relaxation exercises in vocal training programmes was evaluated. The exercise programmes were carried out with first-year students in a music teacher education programme, and the effect of these exercises on the quality of the voice was measured using acoustic measurement techniques. Thirty-one subjects were included in the study. The experimental group (n = 16) and the control group (n = 15) were determined randomly. While determining the groups, attention was paid to ensure that the characteristics of the groups were the same. An 8-week vocal exercise programme (one session per week) was carried out with the students in the experimental group. The voices of the students were recorded before and after each exercise, and then acoustic measurements of these recordings were made. The data obtained from the measurements conducted before the vocal exercises were compared with the measurement data obtained after the vocal exercises were carried out. The significance assessment of the differentiation of voice parameters in both the short term (comparison of the data obtained before the exercise and the data obtained immediately after the exercise) and in the long term (after the 8-week implementation phase) was made. A significant improvement was shown in voice quality in terms of frequency and amplitude perturbation parameters compared to the control group after each session and at the end of the 8-week exercise programme.

This study attempted to search the nature of language development and the relationship between vocal development and motor development in infancy, and it relied on the descriptive and qualitative approach and the method of content analysis to review and compare three researches related to the relationship of language development and physical development during language learning in the infancy. The results of the three studies, despite some difference between them, indicates the relationship between sound, movement, and body signals before, during and after language learning in infancy

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the buildings of higher education institutions in Turkey, where vocational music education is delivered, in terms of physical and acoustical sufficiency. This research is a descriptive study conducted with qualitative method and survey model. The population of the research consists of all of the buildings of the higher education institutions in Turkey, where vocational music education is delivered. Data of the research have been collected through semi-structured interview from instructions who serve in a total of 85 different higher education programs in Turkey, where vocational music education activities are conducted. It was determined in line with the collected data that there are important deficiencies in the buildings of the university institutions in Turkey in terms of both physical and acoustical sufficiency, where vocational music education is delivered. On the other hand, only 14% of the instructors stated that the institutional buildings meet the acoustical needs required by vocational music education. In conclusion, this study tries to make suggestions for the solution of the detected problems in order to create a certain standard in physical and acoustical aspects in the buildings of higher education institutions, where vocational music education is delivered.

In this study, pictures drawn by primary school students about noise were analyzed semiotically. The study was carried out with 20 primary school student volunteers. Research data are the pictures drawn by the children and semi-structured interview records. From the analysis of the students' drawings, three main themes, namely "visual indicator", "sign", and "symbol" are identified in this paper. The reasons for the noise in the school are depicted quite well in the student pictures; noise is reflected as a phenomenon that is disturbing, destructive, threatening physiological-psychological health, and negatively affecting social life and learning in school. However, paintings also showed that the children perceived sound and noise as the same concept. Students identified calmness in the classroom with the teacher. Findings suggested that activities should be included to improve the sound and noise awareness of the students at the school, initiate awareness in a school of silence as a shared social value, and physically improve school acoustic quality.

Many science departments encourage students to gain experience conducting research. However, finding ecological research projects that allow students to test a hypothesis in the field, over the relatively short time span of a semester, can be challenging. This article describes an inquiry-based research activity examining the influence that urban noise has on the behavior of gray squirrels. One of the consequences of urbanization is increased noise from automobiles and other human activities. This research project allows students to pose hypotheses regarding how squirrel behavior changes in response to human noise and then test those hypotheses. This activity is well suited for students in ecology, animal behavior, or vertebrate biology classes. It allows students flexibility in the hypothesis they test and the methods they use, while giving students a framework that lets them successfully complete a field research project. Students gain experience developing hypotheses, designing a field experiment, writing a research proposal, collecting field data, conducting data analysis, and presenting the results of their project.

This study investigated whether individuals with high autistic traits rely on psychoacoustic abilities in affective prosody recognition (APR). In 94 college students, Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and psychoacoustic abilities were measured. Results indicated that higher AQ, higher rapid auditory processing (RAP), and maleness were associated with a lower APR accuracy for low-intensity prosodies. There was a strong positive association between RAP and APR for participants with high AQ, whereas low-AQ participants showed no such pattern. The findings suggest a reliance on psychoacoustic abilities as compensatory mechanism for deficits in higher-order processing of emotional signals in social interactions, and imply potential benefits of auditory interventions in improving APR among individuals with high autistic traits.

Efficient neural encoding of sound plays a critical role in speech and language, and when impaired, may have reverberating effects on communication skills. This study investigated disruptions to neural processing of temporal and spectral properties of speech in individuals with ASD and their parents and found evidence of inefficient temporal encoding of speech sounds in both groups. The ASD group further demonstrated less robust neural representation of spectral properties of speech sounds. Associations between neural processing of speech sounds and language-related abilities were evident in both groups. Parent-child associations were also detected in neural pitch processing. Together, results suggest that atypical neural processing of speech sounds is a heritable ingredient contributing to the ASD language phenotype.

This study aims to understand if Mandarin late learners of English can successfully manipulate acoustic and kinematic cues to deliver English stress contrast in production. Mandarin (N = 8) and English (N = 8) speakers were recorded producing English trochaic (initial stress) and iambic (final stress) items during a nonword repetition task. Speakers' jaw movement for the utterances was tracked and analysed. Acoustic and kinematic cues were measured for each syllable, including acoustic duration, fundamental frequency (F0), and intensity, as well as jaw movement duration, displacement, peak velocity, and stiffness. Stress ratios (syllable 1 / syllable 2) were calculated for each cue and compared between groups. Results showed that English and Mandarin speakers had generally comparable performance in differentiating trochaic from iambic patterns, as well as in the degree of between-syllable contrast within each pattern. Between-group differences were only observed in acoustic duration and jaw movement velocity/stiffness. These results suggest that the experience with Mandarin stress contributes to Mandarin speakers' overall successful production of English stress but also results in nonnative use of some acoustic/kinematic cues.

In the first year of life, infants' speech perception becomes attuned to the sounds of their native language. This process of early phonetic learning has traditionally been framed as phonetic category acquisition. However, recent studies have hypothesized that the attunement may instead reflect a perceptual space learning process that does not involve categories. In this article, we explore the idea of perceptual space learning by implementing five different perceptual space learning models and testing them on three phonetic contrasts that have been tested in the infant speech perception literature. We reproduce and extend previous results showing that a perceptual space learning model that uses only distributional information about the acoustics of short time slices of speech can account for at least some crosslinguistic differences in infant perception. Moreover, we find that a second perceptual space learning model, which benefits from word-level guidance. performs equally well in capturing crosslinguistic differences in infant speech perception. These results provide support for the general idea of perceptual space learning as a theory of early phonetic learning but suggest that more fine-grained data are needed to distinguish between different formal accounts. Finally, we provide testable empirical predictions of the two most promising models and show that these are not identical, making it possible to independently evaluate each model in experiments with infants in future research.

This work presents an analysis of the didactic literature for the initial learning of intonation on violin and viola. Analysis has been conducted through a document-analysis design of 86 methods. The chosen analytic categories were: (1) contents (number of pitches and sequence of pitches presentation); (2) pedagogy (teaching approach and use of pizzicato); and (3) auxiliary learning resources (written accompaniments and audio resources). The results of the analysis allowed us to conclude that there is a great disparity in the number of pitches, which is reduced with the passage of time. Different sequences coexist in practically all the materials, and the traditional teaching approach occurs the most frequently in the documents analyzed. A homogeneous teaching approach is adopted in most of the documents, especially with the violin. Pizzicato is scarcely used as a didactic resource. There is a wide inclusion of written (accompaniments) and recorded (minus-one) auxiliary resources in the most modern documents. Based on these results, a methodological proposal for the initial learning of intonation on these instruments is presented.

Lexical tone languages like Mandarin Chinese require listeners to discriminate among different pitch patterns. A syllable spoken with a rising pitch (e.g. "b[i-acute]" 'nose') carries a different meaning than the same syllable spoken with a falling pitch (e.g. "b[i with grave]" 'arm'). For native speakers (L1) of a non-tonal language, accurate perception of tones in a second language (L2) is notoriously difficult. Musicians, however, have typically shown an aptitude for lexical tone learning due to the unique perceptual demands of music. This study tested whether musical effects can be exploited to improve linguistic abilities in the general population. A pre-test, 8-week training, post-test design was used to measure L1 English participants' sensitivity to tone. Individual Differences Scaling was used to measure participants' weighting of pitch height and movement cues. Participants took part in classroom Mandarin learning only (+L2), musical ear training only (+Music), or classroom learning combined with musical training (+L2+Music). An L1 Mandarin group served as a baseline. At pre-test, mean sensitivity to tone and multidimensional scaling results were similar across all three L1 English groups. After training, all three L1 English groups improved in mean sensitivity, though only the +L2+Music group did so at a significant rate. Multidimensional scaling revealed that all groups increased their weighting of the more informative pitch movement cue at roughly equal rates. Short-term musical training thus affected change in cue weighting of linguistic pitch in a manner comparable to that occurring after a semester of L2 classroom learning. When combined with classroom learning, short-term musical training resulted in even greater sensitivity to pitch movement cues. These results contribute to models of music-language interaction and suggest that focused application of non-linguistic acoustic training can improve phonetic perception in ways that are relevant to language learning.

This quasi-experimental study aimed to determine the relationship between (1) oral language ability and emotions represented by facial emotions, and (2) modality of assessment (audios versus videos) and sentiments embedded in each modality. Sixty university students watched and/or listened to four selected audio-visual stimuli and orally answered follow-up comprehension questions. One stimulus was designed to evoke happiness while the other, sadness. Participants' facial emotions during the answering were measured using the "FaceReader" technology. In addition, four trained raters assessed the responses of the participants. An analysis of the "FaceReader" data showed that there were significant main and interaction effects of sentiment and modality on participants' facial emotional expression. Notably, there was a significant difference in the amount of facial emotions evoked by (1) the happy vs. sad sentiment videos and (2) video vs. audio modalities. In contrast, sentiments embedded in the stimuli and modalities had no significant effect on the measured speaking performance of the participants. Nevertheless, we found a number of significant correlations between the participants' test scores and some of their facial emotions evoked by the stimuli. Implications of these findings for the assessment of oral communication are discussed.

The discipline of film studies often engages in analyses of the functions of filmmakers' decisions in terms of their effects on viewers. Behavior analysis uses a similar, functional-analytic approach toward understanding the relationship between individuals' behavior and the environmental effects that maintain their behavior. Given converging similarities between the two disciplines, a functional analysis of filmmaking is provided, using Skinner (1957)'s "Verbal Behavior" as a guiding framework. Similar to behavioral conceptualizations of language and speaker-listener verbal episodes, the analysis prioritizes functional explanation of the controlling variables and conditions that underlie the meaning of filmmakers' behavior and behavioral products, rather than solely focusing on their topographical description. Viewers' responses to the audiovisual stimuli of the film are emphasized as key controlling variables, through rules specifying contingency relations as well as through contingency shaping, including when the filmmaker acts as a self-viewer who directly shapes their own behavior. Their responding as a self-viewer during the production and editing of a film is explored as a problem-solving process, similar to other artists who serve as their own audience when creating and editing their behavioral products.

This study aims to investigate the interaction between acoustical and psychological features in the perception of soundscape to improve the learning attitude. Sound measurements were performed in nine classrooms in three Hong Kong's higher education institutions and questionnaires were used to collect responses from 209 students who attended lectures. The measured sound levels ranged from L[subscript Aeq] 55.20 to 73.55 dB. The corresponding values of loudness ranged from 2.78 to 12.5 sones and fluctuation strengths ranged from 1.17 to 2.33 vacils. Students indicated that anthropogenic sounds such as people shouting, playing, and talking were quite frequent and unpleasant. The results of structural equation modelling showed that classroom acoustical environments with lower sound levels, loudness, and fluctuation strengths would positively influence acoustical perceptions, encompassing acoustical comfort, acoustical calmness, acoustical satisfaction, and hearing of natural sounds while students' favourable acoustical perceptions promoted their learning attitude. The findings of the study confirmed that anthropogenic sounds negatively affected students' learning attitude in the higher education context.

Makams of Classical Turkish Music have been tried to be classified through various studies for the past years. Significant differences of opinion have emerged in the classification process of the makams in Music Education and Literacy from past to present. This situation creates problems in learning the makams related to music education and recognizing the makams heard. Additionally, there are uncertainties in the classification of the makam genre of the song, as individual mistakes were made while notating the musical notes. Apart from that, this situation constitutes a problem not only for the ones studying Turkish Classical Music but also for the ones interested in this certain type of Music. Therefore, the objective of the research is to contribute to the makam classification in Classical Turkish Music Education by developing an MIR system that determines the makam of the songs. Theoretically, we can extract the properties of sound signals with Time Wavelet Scattering Feature Extraction, classify them with SVM and distinguish between types of makams. In this study, upon eight different Makams, a Musical Information Retrieval system has been created via the Artificial Intelligence (AI) method of Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Time Wavelet Scattering Feature Extraction and through using a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerator for the sake of feature extraction. We performed the classification process by modeling it on the MATLAB program. The study's success rate was identified as 98.21% and it acquired a higher success rate compared to the other studies in the literature. After completing the classification procedure, the Makams were identified by sending samples belonging to different sound files from the system consisting of a database belonging to eight different Makams. In our study, the classification and detection processes were realized with nearly a hundred percent success. The difficulties encountered in classifying the makams in Classical Turkish Music mentioned above, with the application of artificial intelligence, the classification difficulty of individuals who have received this type of training or are interested in this subject has been overcome.

School space plays an essential role in creating a pleasurable learning atmosphere. The tendency of everyone to choose a school space also varies. By knowing this trend pattern, schools can be designed to improve student learning effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to find out which school spaces students choose to study, what kind of room criteria are needed, and distribution patterns of students' preference choices. This research used both the qualitative exploratory and quantitative methods using an open-ended question questionnaire for data collection. Data analysis techniques used qualitative analysis methods consisting of open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The results showed that the library, mosque, and multimedia laboratory were the most preferred space for students to study at school. Some factors that influence the selection include thermal comfort, completeness of supporting facilities, and acoustic comfort.

The research has been carried out at the Islamic junior high school of East Lampung to determine the effectiveness of the Connecting, Organizing, Reflecting, and Extending (CORE) learning model on students' creative thinking skills on sound waves topic. The research method used was a quasi-experimental design with Non-Equivalent Control Group Design. Data on creative thinking skill were collected using essay test instrument. This research was conducted on the eighth-grade students of an Islamic senior high school in East Lampung with a sample of 60 students taken by using purposive sampling technique. Based on the Effect Size test, the effectiveness value of the CORE model on students' creative thinking skills are 0.48 which is in the medium category. These results prove that the CORE learning model is effective in enhancing students' creative thinking skills on sound wave material. This study also provides a storyboard on how to apply an effective CORE model to improve students' creative thinking abilities.

Purpose: Teachers are occupational voice users with significant vocal demand. This study examined if a vocal hygiene program could mitigate the effects of occupational vocal demand in primary school teachers across 1 month. Method: Sixty female teachers participated, with 30 in an experimental group receiving vocal hygiene education plus daily home practice for 1 month and 30 in a control group with no intervention. Their vocal changes across the month were quantified with (a) acoustic measures on fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]), vocal intensity, jitter and shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio, and smoothed cepstral peak prominence and (b) Voice Handicap Index (VHI-10) and Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI) scores. Results: Analysis of covariance showed significantly larger changes (significant decreases) in conversational f[subscript o] and in jitter for the experimental group relative to the control group. Post hoc pairwise comparisons following repeated-measures analysis of variance showed significant decreases in conversational f[subscript o] and in jitter across the month for the experimental group. No significant differences in VHI-10 and VFI scores were found between the groups. Conclusions: Vocal demand-related changes in acoustic measures could be partially mitigated with the vocal hygiene program. Future studies with a more refined intervention program and more long-term follow-up are recommended to better understand the long-term benefits of vocal hygiene programs on primary school teachers.

Purpose: This study investigated the efficacy of ultrasound biofeedback compared to a traditional acoustic input-only method in the second-language (L2) production training of English tense-lax vowel contrasts (/i-[near-close near-front unrounded vowel]/ and /e-[open-mid front unrounded vowel]/). The relationship between the degrees of production and perception learning was also examined to explore a potential L2 production-perception link. Method: Using a pretest/training/posttest paradigm, two groups of native Mandarin speakers received three sessions of training, one with ultrasound and one with audio only. Perception performance was measured by accuracy in AX discrimination. Production performance was measured in terms of accuracy in repetition production and Euclidean distance between contrasting vowels. Results: Both groups showed significant improvements in posttest production and perception tasks. Additionally, the training benefits were retained 6 weeks after training. The two groups, however, did not differ significantly in training gains; nor was there a significant correlation between training-induced changes in perception and production performance. Conclusions: The results indicate that ultrasound feedback is similarly effective as the audio-only training in improving the L2 production of English tense-lax contrasts and the benefits transferred to perception. The lack of correlation between production and perception gains suggests that the two modalities need to be separately trained to achieve desired L2 learning outcomes.

Purpose: Atypical vowel production contributes to reduced speech intelligibility in children and adults with Down syndrome (DS). This study compares the acoustic data of the corner vowels /i/, /u/, /ae/, and /[open back unrounded vowel]/ from speakers with DS against typically developing/developed (TD) speakers. Method: Measurements of the fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) and first four formant frequencies (F1-F4) were obtained from single word recordings containing the target vowels from 81 participants with DS (ages 3-54 years) and 293 TD speakers (ages 4-92 years), all native speakers of English. The data were used to construct developmental trajectories and to determine interspeaker and intraspeaker variability. Results: Trajectories for DS differed from TD based on age and sex, but the groups were similar with the striking change in f[subscript o] and F1-F4 frequencies around age 10 years. Findings confirm higher f[subscript o] in DS, and vowel-specific differences between DS and TD in F1 and F2 frequencies, but not F3 and F4. The measure of F2 differences of front-versus-back vowels was more sensitive of compression than reduced vowel space area/centralization across age and sex. Low vowels had more pronounced F2 compression as related to reduced speech intelligibility. Intraspeaker variability was significantly greater for DS than TD for nearly all frequency values across age. Discussion: Vowel production differences between DS and TD are age- and sex-specific, which helps explain contradictory results in previous studies. Increased intraspeaker variability across age in DS confirms the presence of a persisting motor speech disorder. Atypical vowel production in DS is common and related to dysmorphology, delayed development, and disordered motor control.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore when and how Mandarin-speaking children use contextual cues to normalize speech variability in perceiving lexical tones. Two different cognitive mechanisms underlying speech normalization (lower level acoustic normalization and higher level acoustic-phonemic normalization) were investigated through the lexical tone identification task in nonspeech contexts and speech contexts, respectively. Besides, another aim of this study was to reveal how domain-general cognitive abilities contribute to the development of the speech normalization process. Method: In this study, 94 five- to eight-year-old Mandarin-speaking children (50 boys, 44 girls) and 24 young adults (14 men, 10 women) were asked to identify ambiguous Mandarin high-level and mid-rising tones in either speech or nonspeech contexts. Furthermore, in this study, we tested participants' pitch sensitivity through a nonlinguistic pitch discrimination task and their working memory using the digit span task. Results: Higher level acoustic-phonemic normalization of lexical tones emerged at the age of 6 years and was relatively stable thereafter. However, lower level acoustic normalization was less stable across different ages. Neither pitch sensitivity nor working memory affected children's lexical tone normalization. Conclusions: Mandarin-speaking children above 6 years of age successfully achieved constancy in lexical tone normalization based on speech contextual cues. The perceptual normalization of lexical tones was not affected by pitch sensitivity and working memory capacity.

Reflecting their dominance within music education, most musical instruments used in schools are of Western origin. In stark contrast, the adoption of folk instruments for the purposes of facilitating students' music-making and learning in the educational context is rarely encountered. This article reports the empirical data of a study in which a modified, 3D-printed instrument in the form of a shakuhachi was tested based on its usability in a classroom setting and the degree to which students were motivated to learn it. The positive results make a case for child-friendly, affordable, educational instruments that facilitate easy sound production and pitch bending without compromising authenticity and expression. Developing such educational instruments can play a crucial role in invigorating and transmitting traditional music.

As an information-bearing auditory attribute of sound, pitch plays a crucial role in the perception of speech and music. Studies examining pitch processing in autism spectrum disorder have produced equivocal results. To understand this discrepancy from a mechanistic perspective, we used a novel data-driven method, the reverse-correlation paradigm, to explore whether the equivocal findings in autism spectrum disorder have high-level origins in top-down comparisons of internal mental representations of pitch contours. Thirty-two Mandarin-speaking autistic individuals and 32 non-autistic individuals undertook three subtasks testing mental representations of pitch contours in speech, complex tone and melody, respectively. The results indicate that while the two groups exhibited similar representations of pitch contours across the three conditions, the autistic group showed a significantly higher intra-group variability than the non-autistic group. In addition, the two groups did not differ significantly in internal noise, a measure of the robustness of participant responses to external variability, suggesting that the present findings translate genuinely qualitative differences and similarities between groups in pitch processing. These findings uncover for the first time that pitch patterns in speech and music are mentally represented in a similar manner in autistic and non-autistic individuals, through domain-general top-down mechanisms.

Children are known to be fast learners due to their neural plasticity. Learning a non-native language (L2) requires the mastering of new production patterns. In classroom settings, learners are not only exposed to the acoustic input, but also to the unfamiliar grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the L2 orthography. We tested how 9-10-year-old children, with Finnish as a native language (L1), respond to a two-day listen-and-repeat training paradigm, where they simultaneously hear acoustic stimuli and see orthographic cues. In the procedure, non-words containing the L2 vowel /[close central rounded vowel]/ were presented simultaneously with an orthographic cue showing , guiding pronunciation towards the L1 vowel /u/ according to Finnish grapheme--phoneme correspondences. Earlier studies showed that Finnish adults rely on the orthographic cue over the acoustic one, leading them to produce /u/ instead of /[close central rounded vowel]/ when presented with the incongruent L1-L2 grapheme-phoneme correspondence ( -- L1: /u/, L2: /[close central rounded vowel]/). Also, an earlier result from age-matched children receiving only acoustic input showed relatively fast pronunciation changes towards the target vowel. Our present results indicate clear and fast production learning of the non-native sound, and the misleading orthographic cue did not draw attention away from the target acoustic form. With orthographic cues, the participants learned to produce novel sounds faster than without them.