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Temporal alignment between head gesture and prosodic prominence in naturally occurring conversation: An electromagnetic articulometry study
Abstract
Studies of the relationship between speech events and gesticulation have suggested that the peak of the prosodic pitch accent serves as a target with which body gestures may be coordinated (Roth, 2002; Loehr, 2004). While previous work has relied on controlled speech elicitation generally restricted to nonrepresentational extension/retraction (Leonard and Cummins, 2011) or iconic (Kelly et al., 2008) gestures, here we examine the kinematics of the speech articulators and associated head movements from pairs of individuals engaged in spontaneous conversation. Age and gender matched native speakers of American English seated 2 m apart were recorded using two electromagnetic articulometer (EMA) devices (Tiede and Mooshammer, 2013). Head movements were characterized by the centroid of reference sensors placed on the left and right mastoid processes and the upper incisors. Pitch accents were coded following the ToBI implementation of Pierrehumbert's intonational framework following Beckman and Elam (1997). Preliminary findings show that the apex (point of maximum excursion) of head movements within an IP in general precedes the peak of the associated pitch accent, and is consistently aligned with co-occurring articulatory events within the syllable. [Work supported by NIH NIDCD-DC-012350.].
... These studies take the position of the accented syllables as the key prosodic landmark with which gesture movements align, but they do not take into account intonational phrase boundaries. In general, they found a similar temporal alignment pattern as had been shown for hand gestures: accented syllables are the anchoring point in speech for the most prominent part of a head movement, the gesture apex (defined as the specific point in time when the head changes its direction in the vertical or lateral movement) (Alexanderson et al., 2013;Ambrazaitis et al., 2015;Fern andez-Baena et al., 2014;Goldenberg et al., 2014;Graf et al., 2002;Hadar et al., 1983;Ishi et al., 2014;Kim et al., 2014). However, these studies also reported variability in this alignment pattern. ...
... Previous research on the alignment of head gestures with speech had shown that accented syllables were the anchoring site for head apexes (Alexanderson et al., 2013;Fern andez-Baena et al., 2014;Goldenberg et al., 2014;Graf et al., 2002;Hadar et al., 1983;Ishi et al., 2014). Yet, they also reported variability in this pattern. ...
This study examines the influence of the position of prosodic heads (accented syllables) and prosodic edges (prosodic word and intonational phrase boundaries) on the timing of head movements. Gesture movements and prosodic events tend to be temporally aligned in the discourse, the most prominent part of gestures typically being aligned with prosodically prominent syllables in speech. However, little is known about the impact of the position of intonational phrase boundaries on gesture-speech alignment patterns. Twenty-four Catalan speakers produced spontaneous (experiment 1) and semi-spontaneous head gestures with a confirmatory function (experiment 2), along with phrase-final focused words in different prosodic conditions (stress-initial, stress-medial, and stress-final). Results showed (a) that the scope of head movements is the associated focused prosodic word, (b) that the left edge of the focused prosodic word determines where the interval of gesture prominence starts, and (c) that the speech-anchoring site for the gesture peak (or apex) depends both on the location of the accented syllable and the distance to the upcoming intonational phrase boundary. These results demonstrate that prosodic heads and edges have an impact on the timing of head movements, and therefore that prosodic structure plays a central role in the timing of co-speech gestures.
... supine vs. upright) (Stone et al., 2007;Tiede, Masaki, & Vatikiotis-Bateson, 2000), but head posture variation in an upright position has not been shown to influence articulation. Head movements can be coordinated with speech movements in some contexts (Goldenberg, Tiede, Honorof, & Mooshammer, 2014;Tiede & Goldenberg, 2015), and can accompany pitch excursions (Ishi, Ishiguro, & Hagita, 2014;Krivokapić, 2014), but no studies have examined whether head movement has inertial consequences for the jaw or lips. Because of their relatively small masses, inertial forces on articulators are likely negligible compared to forces generated by muscle contraction. ...
An articulography study was conducted to investigate variability in the relative contributions of the upper lip, lower lip, and jaw to bilabial closure and opening tasks in speech. We currently do not know the extent to which the contributions of articulator subsystems may vary in the absence of linguistic contextual variation. One hypothesis is that variation in exertive mechanisms (e.g., arousal, effort, and attention) differentially affects articulator subsystems; this predicts that variation in articulator contributions will be nonstationary and will correlate with exertive variables. In this study, head movement during responses is considered a proxy for exertive variation. Nine experimental sessions were conducted in which six participants repeatedly produced the form [i.pa], instructed to do so as consistently as possible throughout the session. It was observed that distributions of relative articulator contributions differed substantially across participants and were non-stationary for all participants. Head movement during response production accounted for a substantial amount of variation in relative articulator contributions. These results show that interactions between subsystems in a coordinative structure are nonstationary and differentially susceptible to exertive modulations. This suggests that experimental manipulation of exertion can be used to investigate the organization of articulatory control.
... supine vs. upright) (Stone et al., 2007;Tiede, Masaki, & Vatikiotis-Bateson, 2000), but head posture variation in an upright position has not been shown to influence articulation. Head movements can be coordinated with speech movements in some contexts (Goldenberg, Tiede, Honorof, & Mooshammer, 2014;Tiede & Goldenberg, 2015), and can accompany pitch excursions (Ishi, Ishiguro, & Hagita, 2014;Krivokapić, 2014), but no studies have examined whether head movement has inertial consequences for the jaw or lips. Because of their relatively small masses, inertial forces on articulators are likely negligible compared to forces generated by muscle contraction. ...
An articulatory study was conducted to investigate whether fluctuations in exertive mechanisms (attention, effort, motivation, arousal, etc.) have a global effect on articulatory control systems. Participants in the experiment produced an articulatory pattern 400 times, attempting to do so as consistently as possible. Evidence for global exertive modulation was obtained in the form of widespread correlations between variables associated with biomechanically independent systems such as phonation, linguo-labial coordination, and head movement/posture. Analyses of movement timing autocorrelation showed evidence for random walk-like dynamics on short timescales and equilibrium dynamics on long timescales, along with evidence for low- and high-exertion states of production. An extension of the coupled oscillators model of articulatory coordination is presented to account for these phenomena.
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