Article

Production and Detection of Speech Errors in Silent, Mouthed, Noise-Masked, and Normal Auditory Feedback Speech

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Abstract

In this study subjects had to report their errors during the speeded production of tongue twister sentences in one of four speech conditions: silent, mouthed, noise-masked, and normal auditory feedback speech. In contrast to the other three conditions, silent speech comprises speech planning but no articulation. Error monitoring in the normal auditory feedback condition may occur both by means of an inner speech (prearticulatory) loop and by means of auditory feedback, whereas in the other conditions only the first channel is available. The results showed that reported error rates were roughly equal in the silent, mouthed, and noise-masked condition, with an increase in the normal auditory feedback condition. Significantly more phonemic-sized errors and disfluencies were reported with auditory feedback, whereas word errors were less frequent. Notwithstanding the differences with respect to error size, report rates for the individual error categories (e.g. anticipations, perseverations, substitutions, etc.) did not differ notably for the four conditions. Errors typically occurred at the same points across speech conditions. These results suggest that speech planning processes are similar in the four speech conditions. Moreover, actual motor execution (i.e. articulation) does not appear to be an important contributor to the error events under study. The main difference between conditions can be attributed to the available monitoring channels.

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... In the noise masked feedback condition, external speech is masked by a loud, white noise, allowing only internal speech to be monitored. Noise-masked speech production by healthy participants is associated with fewer speech errors, indicating the relative contribution of the external monitoring channel [76]. If in comparison to external monitoring, internal monitoring is impaired, we expect the noise masking to affect monitoring behavior. ...
... It is not very surprising that different errors are detected via different monitoring channels. For instance, Postma and Noordanus [76] showed that in healthy subjects masking auditory feedback did not affect the detection of semantic errors but decreased the detection rates of phonemic errors and disfluencies. ...
... While it might be possible that the noise did not completely mask the speech produced by the participants, it is unlikely that the white noise produced at 90 dB would not have interfered with the perception of speech. Even more so as the same noise at the same volume was successful in manipulating monitoring performance in previous studies [3,76]. ...
Article
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Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) display a variety of impairments in motor and non-motor language processes; speech is decreased on motor aspects such as amplitude, prosody and speed and on linguistic aspects including grammar and fluency. Here we investigated whether verbal monitoring is impaired and what the relative contributions of the internal and external monitoring route are on verbal monitoring in patients with PD relative to controls. Furthermore, the data were used to investigate whether internal monitoring performance could be predicted by internal speech perception tasks, as perception based monitoring theories assume. Performance of 18 patients with Parkinson’s disease was measured on two cognitive performance tasks and a battery of 11 linguistic tasks, including tasks that measured performance on internal and external monitoring. Results were compared with those of 16 age-matched healthy controls. PD patients and controls generally performed similarly on the linguistic and monitoring measures. However, we observed qualitative differences in the effects of noise masking on monitoring and disfluencies and in the extent to which the linguistic tasks predicted monitoring behavior. We suggest that the patients differ from healthy subjects in their recruitment of monitoring channels.
... Evidence in favour of the distinction between self-monitoring internal and self-monitoring overt speech is formed by demonstrations that the detection rate of speech errors by self-monitoring is affected negatively by loud masking noise (e.g. Lackner & Tuller, 1979;Oomen, Postma, & Kolk, 2001;Postma & Kolk, 1992;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Because speech errors can be detected both before and after speech initiation, one would not expect that the error detection rate would drop to zero in the absence of auditory feedback. ...
... Evidence for the role of auditory feedback in self-monitoring mainly stems from experiments eliciting speech errors with and without loud masking noise: If the detection rate of speech errors suffers under loud masking noise this is taken as evidence for the importance of audition. Experiments of this nature have been reported by Postma and Kolk (1992), Postma and Noordanus (1996) and . Postma and Kolk (1992) found that loud masking noise among other things reduced the numbers of disfluencies and self-repairs. ...
... This points at the relevance of auditory feedback for self-monitoring. Postma and Noordanus (1996) asked their speakers to report their own errors during speeded production of tongue twisters under four different conditions, viz. silent, mouthed, noise-masked and normal auditory feedback. ...
Article
Two experiments are reported, eliciting segmental speech errors and self-repairs. Error frequencies, detection frequencies, error-to-cutoff times and cutoff-to-repair times were assessed with and without auditory feedback, for errors against four types of segmental oppositions. Main hypotheses are (a) prearticulatory and postarticulatory detection of errors is reflected in a bimodal distribution of error-to-cutoff times; (b) after postarticulatory error detection repairs need to be planned in a time-consuming way, but not after prearticulatory detection; (c) postarticulatory error detection depends on auditory feedback. Results confirm hypotheses (a) and (b) but not (c). Internal and external detection are temporally separated by some 500 ms on average, fast and slow repairs by some 700 ms. Error detection does not depend on audition. This seems self-evident for prearticulatory but not for postarticulatory error detection. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
... Both monitoring and repairing have been shown to occur before speech is actually articulated (i.e., the speaker is unable to overtly listen because s/he has not stated anything overtly; Blackmer & Mitton, 1991;Dell & Repka, 1992;Garnsey & Dell, 1984;Kolk & Postma, 1996;Postma & Kolk, 1992a, 1992bPostma & Noordanus, 1996) and after speech is articulated (i.e., the speaker hears and listens to his/her own overt speech; Berg, 1992;Levelt, 1983Levelt, , 1989Nakatani & Hirschberg, 1994;Postma, 2000). Most of the support for repairs occurring prior to speech articulation (i.e., pre-articulatory) has been generated by speech error and repair research with adult samples. ...
... Most of the support for repairs occurring prior to speech articulation (i.e., pre-articulatory) has been generated by speech error and repair research with adult samples. Some studies show pre-articulatory repairs by demonstrating that (a) corrections are frequently ready before the articulation of an error (Blackmer & Mitton, 1991), (b) individuals often create errors without articulation, such as repeating a tongue-twister with inner speech (Dell & Repka, 1992), (c) stuttering (a fluency error in speech production) can be produced instead of an overt post-articulatory repair because the speech error or issue is already being "corrected" in some way before it is uttered (Kolk & Postma, 1996;Postma & Kolk, 1993), and (d) slips of the tongue can occur without articulation and/or external feedback (Dell & Repka, 1992;Postma & Kolk, 1992a,b;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). The occurrence of speech repairs both before and after speech articulation has suggested that some speech errors or issues might be repaired without conscious awareness. ...
... Postma (2000) reached the conclusion that research has demonstrated the existence of both conscious and unconscious repairs of speech errors. For example, Postma and Noordanus (1996) asked adult participants to press a button when an error occurred in their speech. The authors found that participants sometimes repaired their speech errors but did not always press the button when a speech error and repair occurred. ...
Article
When individuals correct their own speech, it is often assumed they are doing so for the benefit of others’ comprehension. As such, most of the research exploring speech repairs, especially among young children, has been conducted with social speech (between two or more people) and little with private speech (speech directed toward the self). In the present study, we explore social and private speech errors and self-repairs from 27 3- and 4-year-old preschoolers who completed a selective attention task and a Lego construction task with and without an involved experimenter. Timing (immediate, delayed) and relevance to task (irrelevant, relevant, action relevant) of self-repairs were compared, and developmental trends were explored. Findings indicated preschoolers made errors and repairs in both private and social speech, though more so in social than private speech. In social speech, there were nearly equal numbers of delayed and immediate repairs suggesting both pre- and post-production monitoring when speaking for a listener. In private speech, there were significantly higher numbers of immediate repairs than delayed repairs suggesting more pre-production monitoring when speaking for the self. Though fewer in number, the presence of delayed self-repairs in private speech indicated some post-production monitoring of private speech. Delayed private speech self-repairs from 4-year-olds were almost exclusively in task-action-relevant speech, while delayed private speech self-repairs from 3-year-olds were mostly in task-relevant speech. Developmental changes in private speech use and awareness of speech during preschool are discussed as possible explanations for these trends. Implications for practice are also provided.
... The idea that errors originate mainly at the phonological rather than at the articulatory level is further corroborated by error studies employing a silent speech paradigm (Dell, 1980;Dell & Repka, 1992;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). In a silent speech task, the speaker is instructed to form a mental image of the speech string, without actually articulating the utterance. ...
... Dell (1980) compared self-reported errors in silent and overt speech and observed that silent speech resulted in speech error patterns similar to those in overt speech. Similar results for mouthed (involving silent articulation) and silent speech were found by Postma and Noordanus (1996). In addition, Dell (1980) showed that differences in velocity of articulatory movements when producing speech segmentsspeech segments were categorized as having either slow or fast velocity profilesdid not influence the number of errors. ...
... The participants in their study reported that the intrusions and reductions occurred in their head in silent speech without the actual movements of the articulators. The authors took this observation as support for the role of dynamics in speech planning, just like the phonemes or features in the studies by Dell and Repka (1992) and Postma and Noordanus (1996). ...
Thesis
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This dissertation seeks to answer the question whether articulatory constraints and auditory information affect intrusion and reduction errors. These intrusions and reductions of articulatory movement result from a general tendency to stabilize movement coordination. Stabilisation of speech movement coordination is an autonomous self-organizing process. This process, however, can be affected by factors related to articulatory properties and auditory information. To assess how these factors affect movement coordination, three studies were performed. The first study examined differences in articulatory variability in the onsets of word pairs such as cop top and top top. To this end, different phonetic contexts and speaking rate were manipulated. As word pairs like top top are frequently used as control stimuli and word pairs like cop top as experimental stimuli, this study investigated how these two word pairs differ in movement control.The second study examined how constraints on individual articulators, manipulated by phonetic context, and speaking rate affected the number of intrusions and reductions. The third study investigated how these intrusions and reductions were influenced by the presence or absence of auditory information. Movements of the tongue tip, tongue dorsumand lower lip were recorded with electromagnetic articulography. The first study revealed that word pairs with alternating and identical onset consonants differ to such an extent that using identical onset word pairs as control stimuli is not recommended for future error studies. The second study revealed that articulatory constraints resulted in asymmetrical patterns of intrusions: compared to a high back vowel context, a low vowel context resulted in more intrusions in general. In addition, in a front vowel context, the tongue dorsum intruded more frequently than the tongue tip and lower lip. The third study showed that speakers made fewer intrusions without auditory information available than with auditory information available.The results, which are explained within the framework of Articulatory Phonology and Task Dynamics, support the notion that articulatory constraints and auditory information influence coupling strength and movement coordination as reflected in intrusion and reduction patterns.
... The question of the division of labor between external and internal monitoring channels has been investigated in spoken production, mostly by contrasting error detection under circumstances when auditory feedback is available or blocked by noise (e.g., Nooteboom & Quené, 2017;Oomen & Postma, 2001;Postma & Kolk, 1992;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). In a classic study of auditory blocking, Lackner and Tuller (1979) had participants push a button if they detected their speech errors in conditions with and without noise. ...
... The second line of evidence in favor of some contribution of external monitoring in language production comes from studies showing a decrease in the proportion of detected and corrected errors under noise-masked conditions. For example, Postma and Noordanus (1996) had participants explicitly report their errors by pressing a button while reciting tongue-twisters and found a slightly lower rate of reporting errors under noise-masked than normal conditions (50% vs. 64%, respectively). Other studies have used correction performance as a proxy for monitoring. ...
Article
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This study examined the role of external information in monitoring language production. In a typing-to-dictation task, participants were deprived of all or part of visual feedback. Data were analyzed using signal detection theory (SDT) applied to a multi-component monitoring framework. Results showed that removing the visual information affected the correction of typing errors more than their conscious detection (Exps 1, 2). Reinstating partial visual information (positional information) increased correction rates but not to the level of full visual information, independently of the probability of error detection (Exps 2, 3). Analysis of SDT parameters showed that while manipulating visual information affected the informativeness of the signal for both correction and conscious detection of errors, participants treated this change differently in the two tasks. We discuss the implications of the results, and more generally, the utility of SDT, for theories of monitoring and control in language production.
... Another subjective approach to the study of IS is to examine errors in silent recitation of tongue twisters. Early comparisons of selfreported errors in inner and overt speech illustrated that errors in IS often parallel overt slips of the tongue (Dell & Repka, 1992;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). ...
... Results showed that IS exhibits lexical bias but not a phonemic similarity effect, indicating that IS is not fully specified (Oppenheim & Dell, 2008). Such a finding is at odds with early models claiming fully specified articulatory plans within IS (Levelt, 1983;Postma & Noordanus, 1996) and instead suggests IS is based on an a pre-articulatory representation, such as lexical phonology, which newer models suggest is impoverished relative to postlexical phonology (Goldrick & Rapp, 2007;Indefrey & Levelt, 2004). Later, the same authors showed that IS can evoke articulatory processing under certain circumstances, asserting that the level of specificity within IS is flexible (Oppenheim & Dell, 2010). ...
Article
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Purpose Typical language users can engage in a lively internal monologue for introspection and task performance, but what is the nature of inner speech among individuals with aphasia? Studying the phenomenon of inner speech in this population has the potential to further our understanding of inner speech more generally, help clarify the subjective experience of those with aphasia, and inform clinical practice. In this scoping review, we describe and synthesize the existing literature on inner speech in aphasia. Method Studies examining inner speech in aphasia were located through electronic databases and citation searches. Across the various studies, methods include both subjective approaches (i.e., asking individuals with aphasia about the integrity of their inner speech) and objective approaches (i.e., administering objective language tests as proxy measures for inner speech ability). The findings of relevant studies are summarized. Results Although definitions of inner speech vary across research groups, studies using both subjective and objective methods have established findings showing that inner speech can be preserved relative to spoken language in individuals with aphasia, particularly among those with relatively intact word retrieval and difficulty primarily at the level of speech output processing. Approaches that combine self-report with objective measures have demonstrated that individuals with aphasia are, on the whole, reliably able to report the integrity of their inner speech. Conclusions The examination of inner speech in individuals with aphasia has potential implications for clinical practice, in that differences in the preservation of inner speech across individuals may help guide clinical decision making around aphasia treatment. Although there are many questions that remain open to further investigation, studying inner speech in this specific population has also contributed to a broader understanding of the mechanisms of inner speech more generally.
... In addition, speakers depend to a large degree on auditory information from their own speech when (re-)learning to produce new speech sounds (Borden, 1979;Jones & Munhall, 2003;Lane, Denny, Guenther, Matthies, Menard, & Perkell, et al., 2005). Speakers also use auditory information when maintaining the appropriate kinematic aspects of speech (Forrest, Abbas & Zimmermann, 1986), when validating whether their speech is produced accurately, and when correcting audible errors (Corley, Brocklehurst & Moat, 2011;Dell, 1980;Postma, 2000;Postma & Kolk, 1992;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Despite its apparent importance for monitoring and correcting speech production, little is known about whether and how auditory information influences the occurrence of speech errors. ...
... Several of these transcription-based studies have revealed that the number of phonemic speech errors is similar in noise masked and unmasked speech (Postma & Kolk, 1992;Postma, Kolk & Povel, 1991). In addition, the type and location of these errors within tongue twister sentences are similar for masked and unmasked speech (Dell, 1980;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). These findings suggest that speakers do not employ auditory information to prevent errors, and that the errors originate at the phonological planning level. ...
Article
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Purpose The study investigates whether auditory information affects the nature of intrusion and reduction errors in reiterated speech. These errors are hypothesized to arise as a consequence of autonomous mechanisms to stabilize movement coordination. The specific question addressed is whether this process is affected by auditory information so that it will influence the occurrence of intrusions and reductions. Methods Fifteen speakers produced word pairs with alternating onset consonants and identical rhymes repetitively at a normal and fast speaking rate, in masked and unmasked speech. Movement ranges of the tongue tip, tongue dorsum, and lower lip during onset consonants were retrieved from kinematic data collected with electromagnetic articulography. Reductions and intrusions were defined as statistical outliers from movement range distributions of target and nontarget articulators, respectively. Results Regardless of masking condition, the number of intrusions and reductions increased during the course of a trial, suggesting movement stabilization. However, compared with unmasked speech, speakers made fewer intrusions in masked speech. The number of reductions was not significantly affected. Conclusions Masking of auditory information resulted in fewer intrusions, suggesting that speakers were able to pay closer attention to their articulatory movements. This highlights a possible stabilizing role for proprioceptive information in speech movement coordination.
... Extensive research has provided evidence that both cognitive and motor aspects of speech are monitored continuously for fluent production. For instance, naturally to their own speech errors, including accurate self-reporting of errors in various environments (Postma and Noordanus, 1996;Gauvin et al., 2016); post-error increases in response latencies (Ganushchak and Schiller, 2006); and self-repairs (Levelt, 1983). It has been observed that certain speech error repairs occur too rapidly to be attributed to the interception and planning of corrections after the error is produced, suggesting that errors are intercepted before becoming overt (Levelt, 1983;Hartsuiker and Kolk, 2001). ...
... Several phenomena indicate that speakers inspect their utterances for errors. The most obvious evidence for this is that speakers can interrupt and correct themselves (self-repairs, Levelt 1983) or accurately report having committed an error (Postma and Noordanus 1996). Errors are sometimes interrupted or repaired almost immediately after they start to be pronounced, at a velocity indicating that error detection and repair had already been prepared internally, before the error was even audible (Levelt 1983;Hartsuiker and Kolk 2001). ...
Article
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An event-related fMRI study examined how speakers inspect their own speech for errors. Concretely, we sought to assess (1) the role of the temporal cortex in monitoring speech errors, linked with comprehension-based monitoring; (2) the involvement of the cerebellum in internal and external monitoring, linked with forward modeling; and (3) the role of the medial frontal cortex for internal monitoring, linked with conflict-based monitoring. In a word production task priming speech errors, we observed enhanced involvement of the right posterior cerebellum for trials that were correct, but on which participants were more likely to make a word- as compared to a non-word error (contrast of internal monitoring). Furthermore, comparing errors to correct utterances (contrast of external monitoring), we observed increased activation of the same cerebellar region, of the superior medial cerebellum, and of regions in temporal and medial frontal cortex. The presence of the cerebellum for both internal and external monitoring indicates the use of forward modeling across the planning and articulation of speech. Dissociations across internal and external monitoring in temporal and medial frontal cortex indicate that monitoring of overt errors is more reliant on vocal feedback control.
... However, what inner speech precisely entails is still debated (for a recent review, see Loevenbruck et al., 2018). In the present paper, we examine the motor simulation view that considers inner speech production to be the result of a mental simulation of overt speech (Jeannerod, 2006;Postma and Noordanus, 1996). Inner speech is hence conceived as (inhibited) speech motor acts that triggervia a simulation or an emulation mechanismmultimodal sensory percepts (Loevenbruck et al., 2018). ...
Article
Previous research showed that mental rumination, considered as a form of repetitive and negative inner speech, is associated with increased facial muscular activity. However, the relation between these muscular activations and the underlying mental processes is still unclear. In this study, we tried to separate the facial electromyographic correlates of induced rumination related to either i) mechanisms of (inner) speech production or ii) rumination as a state of pondering on negative affects. To this end, we compared two groups of participants submitted to two types of rumination induction (for a total of 85 female undergraduate students without excessive depressive symptoms). The first type of induction was designed to specifically induce rumination in a verbal modality whereas the second one was designed to induce rumination in a visual modality. Following the motor simulation view of inner speech production, we hypothesised that the verbal rumination induction should result in a higher increase of activity in the speech-related muscles as compared to the non-verbal rumination induction. We also hypothesised that relaxation focused on the orofacial area should be more efficient in reducing rumination (when experienced in a verbal modality) than a relaxation focused on a non-orofacial area. Our results do not corroborate these hypotheses, as both rumination inductions resulted in a similar increase of peripheral muscular activity in comparison to baseline levels. Moreover, the two relaxation types were similarly efficient in reducing rumination, whatever the rumination induction. We discuss these results in relation to the inner speech literature and suggest that because rumination is a habitual and automatic form of emotion regulation, it might be a particularly (strongly) internalised and condensed form of inner speech. Pre-registered protocol, preprint, data, as well as reproducible code and figures are available at: https://osf.io/c9pag/.
... Evidence in support of similar monitoring for internal (covert) and external (overt) speech comes from experiments showing similar distributions in detecting semantic and phonological errors in overt and covert speech (Dell 1978;Dell & Repka 1992;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). The link between internal and external verbal monitoring was further supported by a study showing speech perception effects, more specifically a uniqueness-point effect, during phoneme-monitoring in production (Özdemir, Roelofs, and Levelt, 2007). ...
Article
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As all human activities, verbal communication is fraught with errors. It is estimated that humans produce around 16,000 words per day, but the word that is selected for production is not always correct and neither is the articulation always flawless. However, to facilitate communication, it is important to limit the number of errors. This is accomplished via the verbal monitoring mechanism. A body of research over the last century has uncovered a number of properties of the mechanisms at work during verbal monitoring. Over a dozen routes for verbal monitoring have been postulated. However, to date a complete account of verbal monitoring does not exist. In the current paper we first outline the properties of verbal monitoring that have been empirically demonstrated. This is followed by a discussion of current verbal monitoring models: the perceptual loop theory, conflict monitoring, the hierarchical state feedback control model, and the forward model theory. Each of these models is evaluated given empirical findings and theoretical considerations. We then outline lacunae of current theories, which we address with a proposal for a new model of verbal monitoring for production and perception, based on conflict monitoring models. Additionally, this novel model suggests a mechanism of how a detected error leads to a correction. The error resolution mechanism proposed in our new model is then tested in a computational model. Finally, we outline the advances and predictions of the model.
... It should also be pointed out that some studies that showed a contribution of audition to self-monitoring (e.g. Postma &Kolk, 1992 andPostma &Noordanus, 1996), had collapsed segmental and higher order errors. It seems reasonable that detection of higher order errors can be more dependent on audition, because potentially a longer time window is involved. ...
Article
This paper focuses on the source of self-repairs of segmental speech errors during self-monitoring. A potential source of repairs are candidate forms competing with the form under production. In the time interval between self-monitoring internal and overt speech, activation of competitors probably decreases. From this theory of repairing we derived four main predictions specific for classical SLIP experiments: (1) Error-to-cutoff times are shorter after single elicited errors than after other errors. (2) Single elicited errors are relatively more often detected than other errors, but more so after internal than after external error detection. (3) The correct form is the most frequent form used as repair, but more so for single elicited than for other errors. (4) Cutoff-to-repair times are shorter for single elicited than for other errors. A re-analysis of data formerly obtained in two SLIP experiments mainly supports the theory of repairing for multiple but not for single non-elicited errors.
... Interestingly, the much lower correction rates in the absence of visual feedback were not accompanied by poor awareness over errors. Participants consciously detected about half of their errors, a rate comparable to previous studies in speech monitoring (Hartsuiker et al., 2005;Nooteboom, 2005;Postma & Noordanus, 1996), and comparable to the rate estimated by the conflict-based model of Nozari et al., (2011). This finding shows that a) error awareness is not sufficient for correction, and b) the role of the external channel is much less prominent in error awareness than in error correction. ...
Article
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New theories of monitoring in language production, regardless of their mechanistic differences, all posit monitoring mechanisms that share general computational principles with action monitoring. This perspective, if accurate, would predict that many electrophysiological signatures of performance monitoring should be recoverable from language production tasks. In this study, we examined both error-related and feedback-related EEG indices of performance monitoring in the context of a typing-to-dictation task. To disentangle the contribution of the external from internal monitoring processes, we created a condition where participants immediately saw the word they typed (the immediate-feedback condition) versus one in which displaying the word was delayed until the end of the trial (the delayed-feedback condition). The removal of immediate visual feedback prompted a stronger reliance on internal monitoring processes, which resulted in lower correction rates and a clear error-related negativity. Compatible with domain-general monitoring views, an error positivity was only recovered under conditions where errors were detected or had a high likelihood of being detected. Examination of the feedback-related indices (feedback-related negativity and frontocentral positivity) revealed a two-stage process of integration of internal and external information. The recovery of a full range of well-established EEG indices of action monitoring in a language production task strongly endorses domain-general views of monitoring. Such indices, in turn, are helpful in understanding how information from different monitoring channels are combined.
... An alternative view is that inner speech is a simulation of overt speech production, encompassing all its stages, only interrupted prior to motor execution. In this view, inner speech entails phonological and articulatory specification and is associated with the subjective experience of a voice percept (see e.g., Postma and Noordanus, 1996;Corley et al., 2011;Scott et al., 2013). Several empirical arguments for the proposition that inner speech involves multisensory representations, together with the recruitment of the speech motor system, are provided in Loevenbruck et al. (2018). ...
Article
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Inner speech has been shown to vary in form along several dimensions. Along condensation, condensed inner speech forms have been described, that are supposed to be deprived of acoustic, phonological and even syntactic qualities. Expanded forms, on the other extreme, display articulatory and auditory properties. Along dialogality, inner speech can be monologal, when we engage in internal soliloquy, or dialogal, when we recall past conversations or imagine future dialogs involving our own voice as well as that of others addressing us. Along intentionality, it can be intentional (when we deliberately rehearse material in short-term memory) or it can arise unintentionally (during mind wandering). We introduce the ConDialInt model, a neurocognitive predictive control model of inner speech that accounts for its varieties along these three dimensions. ConDialInt spells out the condensation dimension by including inhibitory control at the conceptualization, formulation or articulatory planning stage. It accounts for dialogality, by assuming internal model adaptations and by speculating on neural processes underlying perspective switching. It explains the differences between intentional and spontaneous varieties in terms of monitoring. We present an fMRI study in which we probed varieties of inner speech along dialogality and intentionality, to examine the validity of the neuroanatomical correlates posited in ConDialInt. Condensation was also informally tackled. Our data support the hypothesis that expanded inner speech recruits speech production processes down to articulatory planning, resulting in a predicted signal, the inner voice, with auditory qualities. Along dialogality, covertly using an avatar’s voice resulted in the activation of right hemisphere homologs of the regions involved in internal own-voice soliloquy and in reduced cerebellar activation, consistent with internal model adaptation. Switching from first-person to third-person perspective resulted in activations in precuneus and parietal lobules. Along intentionality, compared with intentional inner speech, mind wandering with inner speech episodes was associated with greater bilateral inferior frontal activation and decreased activation in left temporal regions. This is consistent with the reported subjective evanescence and presumably reflects condensation processes. Our results provide neuroanatomical evidence compatible with predictive control and in favor of the assumptions made in the ConDialInt model.
... With respect to these aspects we would like to refer to Gauvin et al. (2016). However, since at least the detection of phonological errors drops significantly if the external loop is blocked (Postma & Noordanus, 1996), partial monitoring on the overt speech is likely. This allows us to follow Roelofs ...
Article
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The paper presents a language production model referring the version of the Levelt model that is proposed by Roelofs starting from his 2005 paper. On the base of that model we argue that slips of the tongue and word finding failures, particularly tip-of-the-tongue states (TOT states), occur for the same reasons. This leads us to a sub classification of TOT states analogous to the sub classification of slips of the tongue. That sub classification of TOT states is evaluated against knowledge about the tip-of-the-tongue effect as presented in the literature.
... The abstraction theory supports that inner speech only activates abstract linguistic representations, independently from any articulatory mental simulation [23,24]. On the other hand, the motor simulation theory [25,26] describes inner speech as an activity that involves a similar motor processing than overt speech, including articulatory detail. Halfway between both theories, Oppenheim and Dell proposed a flexible abstraction hypothesis, in which inner speech operates at two levels: an abstract processing level, and one that incorporates a lower-level articulatory planning [27]. ...
Preprint
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Silent reading is a cognitive operation that produces verbal content with no vocal output. One relevant question is the extent to which this verbal content is processed as overt speech in the brain. To address this, we investigated the signatures of articulatory processing during reading. We acquired sound, eye trajectories and vocal gestures during the reading of consonant-consonant-vowel (CCV) pseudowords. We found that the duration of the first fixations on the CCVs during silent reading are correlated to the duration of the transitions between consonants when the CCVs are actually uttered. An articulatory model of the vocal system was implemented to show that consonantal transitions measure the articulatory effort required to produce the CCVs. These results demonstrate that silent reading is modulated by slight articulatory features such as the laryngeal abduction needed to devoice a single consonant or the reshaping of the vocal tract between successive consonants.
... Nevertheless, apart from anecdotal evidence of unconscious repairs (Laver, 1973), there is some evidence that repairs without full consciousness over the errors may be possible. For example, Postma and Noordanus (1996) asked participants to press a button whenever they detected an error in their speech. They found that occasionally self-repairs were unaccompanied by a button press, although this might simply mean that the participant temporarily forgot the task instructions. ...
Article
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Speakers can correct their speech errors, but the mechanisms behind repairs are still unclear. Some findings, such as the speed of repairs and speakers' occasional unawareness of them, point to an automatic repair process. This paper reports a finding that challenges a purely automatic repair process. Specifically, we show that as error rate increases, so does the proportion of repairs. Twenty highly-proficient English-Spanish bilinguals described dynamic visual events in real time (e.g., "The blue bottle disappears behind the brown curtain") in English and Spanish blocks. Both error rates and proportion of corrected errors were higher on (a) noun phrase (NP)2 vs. NP1, and (b) word1 (adjective in English and noun in Spanish) vs. word2 within the NP. These results show a consistent relationship between error and repair probabilities, disentangled from position, compatible with a model in which greater control is recruited in error-prone situations to enhance the effectiveness of repair.
... For instance, even if we could demonstrate our participants to be highly accurate in judging their spoken responses, there is no guarantee that they are judging their IS with similar accuracy. Many models of speech self-monitoring suggest different error monitoring mechanisms operating at different levels of word retrieval and production (e.g., Postma & Noordanus, 1996), so it may be possible for participants to be accurate in judging their IS but not their spoken output, or vice versa. Because of this inherent difficulty in assessing accuracy of self-reported IS, the focus of our research is not on the accuracy of these reports, but whether they provide useful information about mental processes or clinical outcomes. ...
Article
Many individuals with aphasia report the ability to say words in their heads despite spoken naming difficulty. Here, we examined individual differences in the experience of inner speech (IS) in participants with aphasia to test the hypotheses that self-reported IS reflects intact phonological retrieval and that articulatory output processing is not essential to IS. Participants (N = 53) reported their ability to name items correctly internally during a silent picture-naming task. We compared this measure of self-reported IS to spoken picture naming and a battery of tasks measuring the underlying processes required for naming (i.e., phonological retrieval and output processing). Results from three separate analyses of these measures indicate that self-reported IS relates to phonological retrieval and that speech output processes are not a necessary component of IS. We suggest that self-reported IS may be a clinically valuable measure that could assist in clinical decision-making regarding anomia diagnosis and treatment.
... As such, it may feature physiological correlates with recordable physical signals. In this physicalist or embodied view, inner speech production is described as similar to overt speech production, except that the motor execution process is blocked and no sound is produced (Grèzes & Decety, 2001;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Under the Motor Simulation hypothesis, a continuum exists between overt and covert speech, in line with the continuum between imagined and actual actions proposed by Decety and Jeannerod (1996). ...
... Intuition suggests that auditory comprehension is important for self-monitoring, and evidence shows this to be so. For example, monitoring suffers when healthy speakers are asked to detect their errors in the presence of noise (Lackner and Tuller, 1979;Oomen et al., 2001;Postma and Noordanus, 1996). On the other hand, the linguistic signatures of monitoringself-interruption, editing terms ("uh-", "no"), and repairsoften happen too rapidly for auditory feedback to have plausibly played a role (Levelt, 1983). ...
... Importantly, the role of articulatory processing in IS not only is relevant in the context of aphasia but is also discussed within the general literature on IS, where the question remains open as to whether IS in healthy individuals involves prearticulatory motor planning processes. Early models described IS as including all stages of speech production up to overt articulation, thus including a fully specified articulatory plan (Levelt, 1983;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Since then, many theorists have shifted toward models of IS that are more abstract in nature, without particular articulatory features (Indefrey & Levelt, 2004;Levelt, 2001;Oppenheim & Dell, 2008). ...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Individuals with aphasia often report that they feel able to say words in their heads, regardless of speech output ability. Here, we examine whether these subjective reports of successful “inner speech” (IS) are meaningful and test the hypothesis that they reflect lexical retrieval. Method Participants were 53 individuals with chronic aphasia. During silent picture naming, participants reported whether or not they could say the name of each item inside their heads. Using the same items, they also completed 3 picture-based tasks that required phonological retrieval and 3 matched auditory tasks that did not. We compared participants' performance on these tasks for items they reported being able to say internally versus those they reported being unable to say internally. Then, we examined the relationship of psycholinguistic word features to self-reported IS and spoken naming accuracy. Results Twenty-six participants reported successful IS on nearly all items, so they could not be included in the item-level analyses. These individuals performed correspondingly better than the remaining participants on tasks requiring phonological retrieval, but not on most other language measures. In the remaining group (n = 27), IS reports related item-wise to performance on tasks requiring phonological retrieval, but not to matched control tasks. Additionally, IS reports were related to 3 word characteristics associated with lexical retrieval, but not to articulatory complexity; spoken naming accuracy related to all 4 word characteristics. Six participants demonstrated evidence of unreliable IS reporting; compared with the group, they also detected fewer errors in their spoken responses and showed more severe language impairments overall. Conclusions Self-reported IS is meaningful in many individuals with aphasia and reflects lexical phonological retrieval. These findings have potential implications for treatment planning in aphasia and for our understanding of IS in the general population.
... A more nuanced view, referred to as the Motor Simulation hypothesis, is that inner speech is a mental simulation of articulation, without actual movement. In this view, inner speech production is described as similar to overt speech production, except that motor execution is blocked (Grèzes & Decety, 2001;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Under the Motor Simulation hypothesis, a continuum exists between overt and covert speech, in line with the continuum between imagined and actual actions proposed by Decety & Jeannerod (1996). ...
Book
Full-text available
The nature of inner language has long been under the scrutiny of humanities, through the practice of introspection. The use of experimental methods in cognitive neurosciences provides complementary insights. This chapter focuses on wilful expanded inner language, bearing in mind that other forms coexist. It first considers the abstract vs. concrete (or embodied) dimensions of inner language. In a second section, it argues that inner language should be considered as an action-perception phenomenon. In a third section, it proposes a revision of the « predictive control » account, fitting with our sensory-motor view. Inner language is considered as deriving from multisensory goals, generating multimodal acts (inner phonation, articulation, sign) with multisensory percepts (in the mind’s ear, tact and eye). In the final section, it presents a landscape of the cerebral substrates of wilful inner verbalization, including multisensory and motor cortices as well as cognitive control networks.
... In a study which looked at inner speech monitoring, participants were asked to produce 'tongue twisters' and report the number of self-corrections (Postma & Noordanus 1996). Participants repeated the task in different conditions: inner speech, mouthing, overt speech in the presence of white noise, and overt speech without noise. ...
Chapter
Inner speech has been investigated using neuroscientific techniques since the beginning of the 20th century. One of the most important finding is that inner and overt speech differ in many respects, not only in the absence/presence of articulatory movements. In addition, studies implicate the involvement of various brain regions in the production and processing of inner speech, including areas involved in phonology and semantics, as well as auditory and motor processing. By looking at parallels between inner speech and other domains of imagery, studies explore two major questions: Are there common types of representations that underlie all types of mental imagery? And, is there a neural substrate for imagery, above and beyond modality? While these questions cannot yet be fully answered, studies of the neuroscience of imagery are bringing us a step towards better understanding of inner speech.
... Smith et al. (1947) Selon une conception plus nuancée, la parole intérieure ne doit pas être considérée comme de la parole à voix haute affaiblie, mais comme une simulation mentale de la production de parole à voix haute. Selon cette conception physicaliste ou incarnée, la production de parole intérieure est considérée comme similaire à la production de parole à voix haute, le processus d'exécution motrice étant bloqué, l'articulation inhibée et la parole restant silencieuse (Grèzes & Decety, 2001 ;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Ainsi un continuum existerait entre la parole à voix haute et la parole intérieure, en lien avec le continuum décrit par Decety et Jeannerod (1996) pour les actions imaginées et effectives. ...
... The fact that we can anticipate errors prior to articulation supports the idea that such a mechanism is used to detect speech errors (Garnsey & Dell, 1984;Postma & Kolk, 1993). Additional evidence for such internal monitor mechanisms is that slips of the tongue are detected in the absence of auditory feedback (Dell & Repka, 1992;Lackner & Tuller, 1979;Postma & Kolk, 1992a, b;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). ...
Chapter
The study of how a speaker produces meaningful utterances is a vital research topic in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, offering a window into not only language itself but also cognition more broadly. We review neurocognitive and behavioral evidence that supports a common set of principles for theories of the processes underlying speech production: independent levels of representation/processing; parallel activation and (limited) interaction; and structure‐sensitive selection and sequencing. We then examine the interaction between speech production and other domains of cognition, reviewing research on monitoring, executive control and attention, and the intention to communicate. This work reveals how production is highly integrated with other domains of cognition, suggesting a number of interesting avenues for future research.
... It has long been debated whether inner speech without sub-articulation exists (reviewed in Geva, in press). In the past, some have argued that every production of inner speech is accompanied by motor activation of the articulatory musculature (Jacobson, 1930(Jacobson, , 1932, even if this can only be traced using Electromyography (EMG), while others argued that inner speech can be produced without any motor involvement (Postma & Noordanus, 1996;Wyczoikowska, 1913). Since the introduction of brain imaging, numerous studies have examined motor activation during inner speech, producing mixed results (Basho, Palmer, Rubio, Wulfeck, & Muller, 2007;Geva, Jones, et al., 2011;Huang, Carr, & Cao, 2002). ...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: Inner speech, or the ability to talk to yourself in your head, is one of the most ubiquitous phenomena of everyday experience. Recent years have seen growing interest in the role and function of inner speech in various typical and cognitively impaired populations. Although people vary in their ability to produce inner speech, there is currently no test battery which can be used to evaluate people's inner speech ability. Here we developed a test battery which can be used to evaluate individual differences in the ability to access the auditory word form internally. Methods: We developed and standardized five tests: rhyme judgment of pictures and written words, homophone judgment of written words and non-words, and judgment of lexical stress of written words. The tasks were administered to adult healthy native British English speakers (age range 20-72, n = 28-97, varies between tests). Results: In all tests, some items were excluded based on low success rates among participants, or documented regional variability in accent. Level of education, but not age, correlated with task performance for some of the tasks, and there were no gender difference in performance. Conclusion: A process of standardization resulted in a battery of tests which can be used to assess natural variability of inner speech abilities among English speaking adults.
... The self-monitoring of audible speech is supported by evidence that rates of error detection and repair decrease when auditory feedback is masked with white noise (Lackner & Tuller, 1979;Oomen, Postma, & Kolk, 2001;Postma & Kolk, 1992). However, auditory comprehension of one's own speech is a relatively slow process that does not explain the detection of errors prior to articulation (Motley, Camden, & Baars, 1982;Postma & Noordanus, 1996;Trewartha & Phillips, 2013) or rapid error detection in overt speech, such as the interruption of the incorrect word "yellow" observed in the utterance "to the ye…, to the orange node" (Levelt, 1983). To account for instances of fast error detection, the comprehension-based theory also postulates monitoring of inner speech by the comprehension system, which occurs after phonological or phonetic encoding of speech but prior to articulation (Levelt, 1983;1989;Wheeldon & Levelt, 1995). ...
Article
Full-text available
This study examined the timing of spontaneous self-monitoring in the naming responses of people with aphasia. Twelve people with aphasia completed a 615-item naming test twice, in separate sessions. Naming attempts were scored for accuracy and error type, and verbalizations indicating detection were coded as negation (e.g., “no, not that”) or repair attempts (i.e., a changed naming attempt). Focusing on phonological and semantic errors, we measured the timing of the errors and of the utterances that provided evidence of detection. The effects of error type and detection response type on error-to-detection latencies were analyzed using mixed-effects regression modeling. We first asked whether phonological errors and semantic errors differed in the timing of the detection process or repair planning. Results suggested that the two error types primarily differed with respect to repair planning. Specifically, repair attempts for phonological errors were initiated more quickly than repair attempts for semantic errors. We next asked whether this difference between the error types could be attributed to the tendency for phonological errors to have a high degree of phonological similarity with the subsequent repair attempts, thereby speeding the programming of the repairs. Results showed that greater phonological similarity between the error and the repair was associated with faster repair times for both error types, providing evidence of error-to-repair priming in spontaneous self-monitoring. When controlling for phonological overlap, significant effects of error type and repair accuracy on repair times were also found. These effects indicated that correct repairs of phonological errors were initiated particularly quickly, whereas repairs of semantic errors were initiated relatively slowly, regardless of their accuracy. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical accounts of self-monitoring and the role of speech error repair in learning.
... In contrast with this Abstraction view, the physicalist or embodied view considers inner speech production as mental simulation of overt speech production. As such, it can be viewed as similar to overt speech production, except that the motor execution process is blocked and no sound is produced (Grèzes & Decety, 2001;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). Under this Motor Simulation view, a continuum exists between overt and covert speech, in line with the continuum drawn by Decety and Jeannerod (1996) between imagined and actual actions. ...
Article
Rumination is predominantly experienced in the form of repetitive verbal thoughts. Verbal rumination is a particular case of inner speech. According to the Motor Simulation view, inner speech is a kind of motor action, recruiting the speech motor system. In this framework, we predicted an increase in speech muscle activity during rumination as compared to rest. We also predicted increased forehead activity, associated with anxiety during rumination. We measured electromyographic activity over the orbicularis oris superior and inferior, frontalis and flexor carpi radialis muscles. Results showed increased lip and forehead activity after rumination induction compared to an initial relaxed state, together with increased self-reported levels of rumination. Moreover, our data suggest that orofacial relaxation is more effective in reducing rumination than non-orofacial relaxation. Altogether, these results support the hypothesis that verbal rumination involves the speech motor system, and provide a promising psychophysiological index to assess the presence of verbal rumination.
... Evidence for the existence of an internal monitor comes from observations that some errors are corrected too quickly (within approximately 150 ms) for this to happen after listening to one's overt speech (e.g., Blackmer & Mitton, 1991). Also, errors can still be detected when overt speech cannot be monitored because of noise masking, suggesting that planned speech can be monitored internally (Lackner and Tuller, 1979; Postma and Kolk, 1992; Postma and Noordanus, 1996; for other evidence, see Oppenheim & Dell, 2008; Severens, Janssens, Kühn, Brass, & Hartsuiker, 2011 ). Finally, even when experimentallyelicited Spoonerisms which would result in taboo words (e.g., the Spoonerism of hit shed) are not produced, they elicit elevated galvanic skin responses, suggesting that they are generated and comprehended internally but barred from overt production by the internal monitor (Motley, Camden, & Baars, 1982). ...
Article
Full-text available
Bilinguals rarely produce unintended language switches, which may in part be because switches are detected and corrected by an internal monitor. But are language switches easier or harder to detect than within-language semantic errors? To approximate internal monitoring, bilinguals listened (Experiment 1) or read aloud (Experiment 2) stories, and detected language switches (translation equivalents or semantically unrelated to expected words) and within-language errors (semantically related or unrelated to expected words). Bilinguals detected semantically related within-language errors most slowly and least accurately, language switches more quickly and accurately than within-language errors, and (in Experiment 2), translation equivalents as quickly and accurately as unrelated language switches. These results suggest that internal monitoring of form (which can detect mismatches in language membership) completes earlier than, and is independent of, monitoring of meaning. However, analysis of reading times prior to error detection revealed meaning violations to be more disruptive for processing than language violations.
... One prominent theory about verbal self-monitoring is the perceptual loop theory proposed by Levelt (1983Levelt ( , 1989. According to this theory, a speech monitor checks the message for its appropriateness, inspects the speech plan, and detects errors prior to its articulation (Schiller, 2005(Schiller, , 2006Schiller, Jansma, Peters, & Levelt, 2006;Wheeldon & Morgan, 2002;Postma & Noordanus, 1996;Wheeldon & Levelt, 1995), as well as after the speech has become overt (Postma, 2000). Verbal self-monitoring is achieved via the speech comprehension system, that is, the same system that is used for understanding the speech of others. ...
Conference Paper
During speech production we continuously monitor what we say. In stressful circumstances, e.g. during a conference talk, a verbal self-monitor may work harder to prevent errors. In an event-related potential study, we investigated whether stress affects participants' performance using a picture naming task in a semantic blocking paradigm. The semantic context of pictures was manipulated; blocks were semantically related (dog, cat, horse) or semantically unrelated (cat, table, flute). Psychological stress was manipulated independently. The stress manipulation did not affect error rate; however, the stress condition yielded increased amplitude of the error related negativity (ERN) compared to the no-stress condition. This ERN effect indicates a higher monitoring activity in the stress condition. Furthermore, participants showed semantic interference effects in reaction times and error rates. The ERN amplitude was also larger during semantically related than unrelated blocks. Semantic relatedness seems to lead to more conflict between possible responses.
... Taken together, these results suggest that the selfperception of IS derives from an earlier stage of processing than overt speech (Hickok, 2012;Indefrey & Levelt, 2004;Levelt, 1996) and does not simply reflect internal modelling of overt speech production processes. This conclusion corresponds with previous findings that some people with aphasia can use IS to perform language tasks better than would have been expected based on the overt speech deficit (Feinberg et al., 1986;Geva et al., 2011;Oppenheim & Dell, 2008;Postma & Noordanus, 1996). ...
Article
People with aphasia frequently report being able to say a word correctly in their heads, even if they are unable to say that word aloud. It is difficult to know what is meant by these reports of "successful inner speech". We probe the experience of successful inner speech in two people with aphasia. We show that these reports are associated with correct overt speech and phonologically related nonword errors, that they relate to word characteristics associated with ease of lexical access but not ease of production, and that they predict whether or not individual words are relearned during anomia treatment. These findings suggest that reports of successful inner speech are meaningful and may be useful to study self-monitoring in aphasia, to better understand anomia, and to predict treatment outcomes. Ultimately, the study of inner speech in people with aphasia could provide critical insights that inform our understanding of normal language.
... This idea is supported by Kelso (1982), who agrees that motor plans are monitored even before execution, through a 'central efference monitor'. In a study which looked at inner speech monitoring, participants were asked to produce 'tongue twisters' and report the number of self-corrections (Postma and Noordanus 1996). ...
Thesis
Patients with aphasia often complain that there is a poor correlation between the words they think (inner speech) and the words they say (overt speech). Previous studies show that there are some cases in which inner speech is preserved while overt speech is impaired, and vice versa. However, these studies have various methodological and theoretical drawbacks. In cognitive models of language processing, inner speech is described as either dependent on both speech production and speech comprehension, or on the speech production system alone. Lastly, imaging studies show that inner speech is correlated with activation in various language areas. However, these studies are sparse and many have methodological caveats. Moreover, studies looking at inner speech in stroke patients are rare. This study examined inner speech in post-stroke aphasia using three different methodological approaches. Using cognitive behavioural methods, inner speech was characterised in healthy participants and stroke patients with aphasia. Using imaging, the brain structures which support inner speech were investigated. Two different methods were employed in this instance: Voxel based Lesion Symptom Mapping (VLSM) and Voxel Based Morphometry (VBM). Lastly, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study the dynamics of functional activations supporting inner speech production. The study showed that inner speech can remain intact while there is a marked deficit in overt speech. Structural studies suggested an involvement of the dorsal language route in inner speech processing, together with systems supporting motor feedback and executive functions. Functional imaging showed that inner speech processing in stroke is correlated with compensatory peri-lesional and contra-lesional activations. Activations outside the language network might reflect increase in effort or attention, or the use of feed forward and feedback mechanisms to support inner speech production. These results have implications for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of certain patients with post-stroke aphasia.
... This alternation of initial phoneme clusters may have reduced similarity effects in orthographic or phonological priming, and it is known to be particularly effective in slowing overt speech production (Rosenbaum, Weber, Hazelett, & Hindorff, 1986), and inducing overt speech errors involving perseverations or exchanges. Because the frequency and types of speech errors are similar for overt and covert production tasks (e.g., Postma & Noordanus, 1996), the Robinson and Katayama (1997) stimuli may have been more potent tongue-twisters, allowing the effect to be seen in a lexical decision task. ...
... Intuition suggests that auditory comprehension is important for self-monitoring, and evidence shows this to be so. For example, monitoring suffers when healthy speakers are asked to detect their errors in the presence of noise (Lackner and Tuller, 1979;Oomen et al., 2001;Postma and Noordanus, 1996). On the other hand, the linguistic signatures of monitoring -self-interruption, editing terms ("uh-", "no"), and repairs -often happen too rapidly for auditory feedback to have plausibly played a role (Levelt, 1983). ...
Article
This study examined spontaneous self-monitoring of picture naming in people with aphasia. Of primary interest was whether spontaneous detection or repair of an error constitutes an error signal or other feedback that tunes the production system to the desired outcome. In other words, do acts of monitoring cause adaptive change in the language system? A second possibility, not incompatible with the first, is that monitoring is indicative of an item’s representational strength, and strength is a causal factor in language change. Twelve PWA performed a 615-item naming test twice, in separate sessions, without extrinsic feedback. At each timepoint, we scored the first complete response for accuracy and error type and the remainder of the trial for verbalizations consistent with detection (e.g., “no, not that”) and successful repair (i.e., correction). Data analysis centered on: (a) how often an item that was misnamed at one timepoint changed to correct at the other timepoint, as a function of monitoring; and (b) how monitoring impacted change scores in the Forward (Time 1 to Time 2) compared to Backward (Time 2 to Time 1) direction. The Strength hypothesis predicts significant effects of monitoring in both directions. The Learning hypothesis predicts greater effects in the Forward direction. These predictions were evaluated for three types of errors -- Semantic errors, Phonological errors, and Fragments – using mixed-effects regression modeling with crossed random effects. Support for the Strength hypothesis was found for all three error types. Support for the Learning hypothesis was found for Semantic errors. All effects were due to error repair, not error detection. We discuss the theoretical and clinical implications of these novel findings.
... proprioception and bone conduction of the produced speech cannot be excluded as 667 a monitoring channel. Lackner and Tuller (1979) hypothesized that word selection 668 study by Postma and Noordanus (1996) contradicts this claim. In their study errors 670 were reported during four production conditions: silent, mouthed, noise--masked 671 and normal feedback. ...
Article
Full-text available
To minimize the number of errors in speech, and thereby facilitate communication, speech is monitored before articulation. It is, however, unclear at which level during speech production monitoring takes place, and what mechanisms are used to detect and correct errors. The present study investigated whether internal verbal monitoring takes place through the speech perception system, as proposed by perception-based theories of speech monitoring, or whether mechanisms independent of perception are applied, as proposed by production-based theories of speech monitoring. With the use of fMRI during a tongue twister task we observed that error detection in internal speech during noise-masked overt speech production and error detection in speech perception both recruit the same neural network, which includes pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), anterior insula (AI), and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Although production and perception recruit similar areas, as proposed by perception-based accounts, we did not find activation in superior temporal areas (which are typically associated with speech perception) during internal speech monitoring in speech production as hypothesized by these accounts. On the contrary, results are highly compatible with a domain general approach to speech monitoring, by which internal speech monitoring takes place through detection of conflict between response options, which is subsequently resolved by a domain general executive center (e.g., the ACC).
... Zeshan, 2004). When speakers are prevented from hearing their own voices (e.g. by wearing headphones emitting loud white noise) or when speakers silently mouth words, they are less likely to detect speech errors compared to when they can hear themselves speak (Lackner and Tuller, 1979;Postma and Noordanus, 1996). These results suggest that speakers rely to some extent on auditory feedback to detect errors in production. ...
Article
Biology-based distinctions between sign and speech can be exploited to discover how the input-output systems of language impact online language processing and affect the neurocognitive underpinnings of language comprehension and production. This article explores which aspects of language processing appear to be universal to all human languages and which are affected by the particular characteristics of audition versus vision, or by the differing constraints on manual versus oral articulation. Neither sign language nor spoken language comes presegmented into words and sentences for the perceiver. In contrast to written language, sign and speech are both primary language systems, acquired during infancy and early childhood without formal instruction. This article discusses sign perception and visual processing, phonology in a language without sound, categorical perception in sign language, processing universals and modality effects in the mental lexicon, the time course of sign versus word recognition, tip-of-the-fingers, non-concatenative morphology, the unique role of space for signed languages, and speaking versus signing.
... This idea is supported by Kelso (1982), who agrees that motor plans are monitored even before execution, through a 'central efference monitor'. In a study which looked at inner speech monitoring, participants were asked to produce 'tongue twisters' and report the number of self-corrections (Postma and Noordanus 1996). ...
Thesis
Patients with aphasia often complain that there is a poor correlation between the words they think (inner speech) and the words they say (overt speech). Previous studies show that there are some cases in which inner speech is preserved while overt speech is impaired, and vice versa. However, these studies have various methodological and theoretical drawbacks. In cognitive models of language processing, inner speech is described as either dependent on both speech production and speech comprehension, or on the speech production system alone. Lastly, imaging studies show that inner speech is correlated with activation in various language areas. However, these studies are sparse and many have methodological caveats. Moreover, studies looking at inner speech in stroke patients are rare. This study examined inner speech in post-stroke aphasia using three different methodological approaches. Using cognitive behavioural methods, inner speech was characterised in healthy participants and stroke patients with aphasia. Using imaging, the brain structures which support inner speech were investigated. Two different methods were employed in this instance: Voxel based Lesion Symptom Mapping (VLSM) and Voxel Based Morphometry (VBM). Lastly, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study the dynamics of functional activations supporting inner speech production. The study showed that inner speech can remain intact while there is a marked deficit in overt speech. Structural studies suggested an involvement of the dorsal language route in inner speech processing, together with systems supporting motor feedback and executive functions. Functional imaging showed that inner speech processing in stroke is correlated with compensatory peri-lesional and contra-lesional activations. Activations outside the language network might reflect increase in effort or attention, or the use of feed forward and feedback mechanisms to support inner speech production. These results have implications for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of certain patients with post-stroke aphasia.
... During the last few decades there have been a number of studies whose aim was to investigate disfluencies and repairs in children's and adults' speech (Postma-Noordanus 1996;Hartsuiker-Kolk 2001;Nooteboom 2005;Gósy 2007;; Horváth 2014a;Beke et al. 2014 etc.). Previous findings confirmed that besides many factors 'age' has a great effect on the ratio of disfluencies (Bortfeld et al. 2001;. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The mental lexicon is the central mechanism of speech production process as it contains indispensable information for speaking. Speakers often face with difficulties during lexical retrieval in spontaneous speech, the examination of these disfluency phenomena may provide an insight into covert processes. The aim of the present research is to examine the selfmonitoring strategies of adults and children by analyzing two types of disfluency phenomena: false starts and false words. The data set consists of a significant amount of spontaneous speech samples from the largest Hungarian database. Results indicate that ‘age’ has a great effect both on the occurrence of disfluencies and on the strategy of repair. This research contributes to the closer exploration of self-monitoring by age and highlights the factor of language development in this respect. Key words: mental lexicon, self-monitoring, self-repair, false word, false start
... Speech processing in the absence of an intelligible acoustic signal Also see brain-computer interface system Denby et al. (2010) Silent tongue twister See tongue twister Silent reading of tongue twisters is slow relative to control passages, and errors are similar to those in spoken material (Postma & Noordanus, 1996). ...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Speech and other oral functions such as swallowing have been compared and contrasted with oral behaviors variously labeled quasispeech, paraspeech, speechlike, and nonspeech, all of which overlap to some degree in neural control, muscles deployed, and movements performed. Efforts to understand the relationships among these behaviors are hindered by the lack of explicit and widely accepted definitions. This review article offers definitions and taxonomies for nonspeech oral movements and for diverse speaking tasks, both overt and covert. Method Review of the literature included searches of Medline, Google Scholar, HighWire Press, and various online sources. Search terms pertained to speech, quasispeech, paraspeech, speechlike, and nonspeech oral movements. Searches also were carried out for associated terms in oral biology, craniofacial physiology, and motor control. Results and Conclusions Nonspeech movements have a broad spectrum of clinical applications, including developmental speech and language disorders, motor speech disorders, feeding and swallowing difficulties, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, trismus, and tardive stereotypies. The role and benefit of nonspeech oral movements are controversial in many oral motor disorders. It is argued that the clinical value of these movements can be elucidated through careful definitions and task descriptions such as those proposed in this review article.
Chapter
Chapter 2 develops the idea that language operates as an inner tool, enhancing cognition. The first part focuses on inner speech, and the second on language as a way to access meaning. I describe inner speech and outline the history of the concept focusing on the traditions started by Vygotsky and Baddeley. I describe the main methods to investigate it, from questionnaires to experiments, the debate on whether inner speech involves articulation, and its functions for memory and metacognition. I then illustrate inner speech’s neural bases and evidence that different kinds of inner speech exist. In the second part, I discuss how embodied/grounded, distributional, and hybrid views intend meaning. Language might work as a shortcut to access meaning and enhance our cognition, providing an efficient way to access simulations, respond to contextual challenges, and, more generally, a new way of being in the world.
Chapter
The Freedom of Words is for anyone interested in understanding the role of body and language in cognition and how humans developed the sophisticated ability to use abstract concepts like 'freedom' and 'thinking'. This volume adopts a transdisciplinary perspective, including philosophy, semiotics, psychology, and neuroscience, to show how language, as a tool, shapes our minds and influences our interaction with the physical and social environment. It develops a theory showing how abstract concepts in their different varieties enhance cognition and profoundly influence our social and affective life. It addresses how children learn such abstract concepts, details how they vary across languages and cultures, and outlines the link between abstractness and the capability to detect inner bodily signals. Overall, the book shows how words – abstract words in particular, because of their indeterminate and open character – grant us freedom.
Article
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In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we examined speech error monitoring in a cortico-cerebellar network for two contrasts: (a) correct trials with high versus low articulatory error probability and (b) overtly committed errors versus correct trials. Engagement of the cognitive cerebellar region Crus I in both contrasts suggests that this region is involved in overarching performance monitoring. The activation of cerebellar motor regions (superior medial cerebellum (SMC), lobules VI and VIII) indicates the additional presence of sensorimotor driven implementation of control. The combined pattern of pre-SMA (active across contrasts) and ACC (only active in the contrast involving overt errors) activations suggests sensorimotor driven feedback monitoring in the medial frontal cortex, making use of proprioception and auditory feedback through overt errors. Differential temporal and parietal cortex activation across contrasts indicates involvement beyond sensorimotor driven feedback in line with speech production models that link these regions to auditory target processing and internal modeling-like mechanisms. These results highlight the presence of multiple, possibly hierarchically interdependent, mechanisms that support the optimizing of speech production.
Article
Inner speech is one of the most important human cognitive processes. Nevertheless, until now, many aspects of inner speech, particularly the emotional characteristics of inner speech, remain poorly understood. The main objectives of our study are to identify the neural substrate for the emotional (prosodic) dimension of inner speech and brain structures that control the suppression of expression in inner speech. To achieve these goals, a pilot exploratory fMRI study was carried out on 33 people. The subjects listened to pre-recorded phrases or individual words pronounced with different emotional connotations, after which they were internally spoken with the same emotion or with suppression of expression (neutral). The results show that there is an emotional component in inner speech, which is encoded by similar structures as in spoken speech. The unique role of the caudate nuclei in the suppression of expression in the inner speech was also shown.
Thesis
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This study explored the relationship of complex working memory (WM) and phonological short-term memory (PSTM) to aspects of second language (L2) oral production and selfrepair behaviour. The study drew on Levelt’s (1989; 1983) model of speech and perceptual loop theory of monitoring while the concept of WM was based on Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) multicomponent model of WM. Complex WM refers to the cognitive capacity of simultaneous storage and processing of information while PSTM refers to the capacity of the phonological store. The participants were 84 Emirati female university students learning English in an intensive language program in Abu Dhabi. It was hypothesised that given the limited automaticity of the language building processes in less advanced EFL learners, and thus the dependence of these processes on attentional resources, speakers with higher WM and PSTM scores would perform better in terms of fluency, accuracy, lexical and syntactic complexity in a task with simultaneous online planning. In addition, a relationship of WM with the number and the types of overt self-repairs was anticipated based on the attentional demands of the monitoring processes. Complex WM was measured with a backward digit span test in participants’ L1 and a listening span test in L2. Phonological STM was measured with a simple word-recall test in L2. Statistical analysis of the data showed a relationship of complex WM with disfluency and general grammatical accuracy, while PSTM correlated significantly with speech rate, general and specific measures of grammatical accuracy as well as lexical variety. Complex WM and PSTM were also found to correlate moderately with overall oral performance scores. No statistically significant results emerged between complex WM, PSTM and number of self-repairs, but there was a significant negative correlation between PSTM and phonological error-repairs. Overall, the findings support that WM contributes to variation in L2 oral production but not overt self-repair behaviour.
Article
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The language production system continually learns. The system adapts to recent experiences while also reflecting the experience accumulated over the lifetime. This article presents a theory that explains how speakers implicitly learn novel phonotactic patterns as they produce syllables. The learning is revealed in their speech errors. For example, if speakers produce syllable strings in which the consonant /f/ is always a syllable onset, their slips will obey this rule; /f/'s will then slip mostly to onset positions. The article reviews over 30 phenomena related to this finding. To explain phonotactic learning, the article presents four linked "mini-theories," each of which addresses components of the data. The first mini-theory, the production theory, provides an account of how speech errors arise during the assembly of word forms. The second, the learning theory, characterizes the implicit learning of phoneme distributions within the production system. The third mini-theory, the consolidation theory, augments the learning theory to explain instances in which this learning depends on a period of time, possibly a sleep period, before it is expressed. The final mini-theory, the developmental theory, addresses cases in which learning varies between children and adults, and depends on speakers' early linguistic experience. The resulting theory forges links between these diverse aspects of psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Article
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Silent reading is a cognitive operation that produces verbal content with no vocal output. One relevant question is the extent to which this verbal content is processed as overt speech in the brain. To address this, we acquired sound, eye trajectories and lips’ dynamics during the reading of consonant-consonant-vowel (CCV) combinations which are infrequent in the language. We found that the duration of the first fixations on the CCVs during silent reading correlate with the duration of the transitions between consonants when the CCVs are actually uttered. With the aid of an articulatory model of the vocal system, we show that transitions measure the articulatory effort required to produce the CCVs. This means that first fixations during silent reading are lengthened when the CCVs require a greater laryngeal and/or articulatory effort to be pronounced. Our results support that a speech motor code is used for the recognition of infrequent text strings during silent reading.
Article
The mechanisms and brain regions underlying error monitoring in complex action are poorly understood, yet errors and impaired error correction in these tasks are hallmarks of apraxia, a common disorder associated with left hemisphere stroke. Accounts of monitoring of language posit an internal route by which production planning or competition between candidate representations provide predictive signals that monitoring is required to prevent error, and an external route in which output is monitored using the comprehension system. Abnormal reliance on the external route has been associated with damage to brain regions critical for sensory-motor transformation and a pattern of gradual error ‘clean-up’ called conduite d'approche (CD). Action pantomime data from 67 participants with left hemisphere stroke were consistent with versions of internal route theories positing that competition signals monitoring requirements. Support Vector Regression Lesion Symptom Mapping (SVR-LSM) showed that lesions in the inferior parietal, posterior temporal, and arcuate fasciculus/superior longitudinal fasciculus predicted action conduite d'approche, overlapping the regions previously observed in the language domain. A second experiment with 12 patients who produced substantial action CD assessed whether factors impacting the internal route (action production ability, competition) versus external route (vision of produced actions, action comprehension) influenced correction attempts. In these ‘high CD’ patients, vision of produced actions and integrity of gesture comprehension interacted to determine successful error correction, supporting external route theories. Viewed together, these and other data suggest that skilled actions are monitored both by an internal route in which conflict aids in detection and correction of errors during production planning, and an external route that detects mismatches between produced actions and stored knowledge of action appearance. The parallels between language and action monitoring mechanisms and neuroanatomical networks pave the way for further exploration of common and distinct processes across these domains.
Article
This study examined the effects of three speech conditions (voiced, whispered, and mouthed) on global average measures of articulatory movement during sentence production. Participants were 20 adults (ten males and ten females) with no history of speech, language, or hearing disorders. They produced six target utterances in the three speaking conditions. Movements of the following articulators were recorded with an electromagnetic articulograph: Mid tongue, front of tongue, jaw, lower lip, and upper lip. The kinematic metrics were averages derived from movement strokes defined by minima in the speed record of each articulator. These measures revealed a number of significant changes between the voiced and mouthed conditions, with relatively few differences between voiced and whispered speech. Significant increases in sentence duration, articulatory stroke count, and stroke duration as well as significant decreases in peak stroke speed, stroke distance, and hull areas were found in the mouthed condition. These findings suggest that both laryngeal activation and auditory feedback play an important role in the production of normally articulated vocal tract movements, and that the absence of these may account for the significant changes in articulation between the voiced and mouthed conditions.
Article
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Two tasks required adults to estimate the muscular ease of articulating word-initial consonant phonemes. Ease ratings were positively correlated with Templin’s data (1957) on three-year-old children’s degree of mastery of these same phonemes. Three-year-olds' phoneme perception data (Koenigsknecht) were not correlated with phoneme production, lending mild support to a motor ease hypothesis of phonological development. Children’s articulatory substitutions (Snow, 1963) also were found to be explainable on the basis of ease of articulation, with substituted phonemes receiving “easier” ratings than the target phonemes for which they were substituted. Adult ease ratings and children’s articulatory mastery of manner, place, and voicing features generally were in fairly close agreement. The significance of these findings is discussed, as well as certain problems presented by the use of adult ease ratings and data from disparate sources and populations.
Article
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Self-repairing of speech errors demonstrates that speakers possess a monitoring device with which they verify the correctness of the speech flow. There is substantial evidence that this speech monitor not only comprises an auditory component (i.e., hearing one’s own speech), but also an internal part: inspection of the speech program prior to its motoric execution. Errors thus may be detected before they are actually articulated. In the covert repair hypothesis of disfluency, this internal error detection possibility has been extended with an internal correction counterpart. Basically, the covert repair hypothesis contends that disfluencies reflect the interfering side-effects of covert, prearticulatory repairing of speech programming errors on the ongoing speech. Internally detecting and correcting an error obstructs the concurrent articulation in such manner that a disfluent speech event will result. Further, it is shown how, by combining a small number of typical overt self-repair features such as interrupting after error detection, retracing in an utterance, and marking the correction with editing terms, one can parsimoniously account for the specific forms disfluencies are known to take. This reasoning is argued to apply to both normal and stuttered disfluency. With respect to the crucial question concerning what makes stuttering speakers so greatly disfluent, it is hypothesized that their abilities to generate error-free speech programs are disordered. Hence, abundant stuttering derives from the need to repeatedly repair one’s speech programs before their speech motor execution.
Article
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This paper presents a cognitive theory on the production and shaping of self-repairs during speaking. In an extensive experimental study, a new technique is tried out: artificial elicitation of self-repairs. The data clearly indicate that two mechanisms for computing the shape of self-repairs should be distinguished. One is based on the repair strategy called reformulation, the second one on lemma substitution. W. Levelt's (1983, Cognition, 14, 41–104) well-formedness rule, which connects self-repairs to coordinate structures, is shown to apply only to reformulations. In case of lemma substitution, a totally different set of rules is at work. The linguistic unit of central importance in reformulations is the major syntactic constituent; in lemma substitutions it is a prosodie unit, the phonological phrase. A parametrization of the model yielded a very satisfactory fit between observed and reconstructed scores. © 1987 Academic Press, Inc.
Article
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Stress pre-entry is the occurrence, before it is due, of the stressed component in a series of rapidly produced movements. The phenomenon appeared in speech (experimentally produced spoonerisms) and in patterns of finger movement: serial-order errors were usually a stressed element entering before its time. The probability of serial-order errors was also found to increase as a function of rate of action. Several explanations are possible, but the model that best fits the data is one of a scanning device for determining serial order of rapidly produced behavior.
Article
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The covert repair hypothesis views disfluencies as by-products of covert self-repairs applied to internal speech errors. To test this hypothesis we examined effects of noise masking and accuracy emphasis on speech error, disfluency, and self-repair rates. Noise reduced the numbers of disfluencies and self-repairs but did not affect speech error rates significantly. With accuracy emphasis, speech error rates decreased considerably, but disfluency and self-repair rates did not. With respect to these findings, it is argued that subjects monitor errors with less scrutiny under noise and when accuracy of speaking is unimportant. Consequently, covert and overt repair tendencies drop, a fact that is reflected by changes in disfluency and self-repair rates relative to speech error rates. Self-repair occurrence may be additionally reduced under noise because the information available for error detection—that is, the auditory signal—has also decreased. A qualitative analysis of self-repair patterns revealed that phonemic errors were usually repaired immediately after their intrusion.
Article
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The hypothesis tested was that stutterers subvocalize more slowly than nonstutterers and that they need more time for the overt production of the fluent parts of their speech. We also investigated whether rate differences could only be observed for those words on which the stutterers expect to stutter. Fifty-nine school children (27 stutterers and 32 nonstutterers) and 19 adults (18 stutterers and 21 nonstutterers) performed a reading task in which a noun was presented together with its definite article. The presentation times of the reading material were controlled by the subjects. Half of the material had to be read silently, the other half orally. In oral reading, only the data from those trials without any indication of disfluencies were used. Dependent variables were presentation times, speech latency, and speech duration. The stutterers’ silent presentation times were significantly longer than those of nonstutterers and this difference was significantly greater for children than for adults. In oral reading all stutterers, regardless of age, had longer presentation times, speech latencies, and article durations than the nonstutterers. Some nouns, however, were uttered significantly more rapidly by stutterers than by nonstutterers. These time differences were found to be independent of the stutterers’ expectation to stutter. Our results indicate that a strictly motoric explanation of stuttering is inadequate. The data show that the stutterers and nonstutterers differ with respect to the temporal parameters not only during speech execution, but during speech planning as well.
Article
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This article presents a theory of sentence production that accounts for facts about speech errors—the kinds of errors that occur, the constraints on their form, and the conditions that precipitate them. The theory combines a spreading-activation retrieval mechanism with assumptions regarding linguistic units and rules. Two simulation models are presented to illustrate how the theory applies to phonological encoding processes. One was designed to produce the basic kinds of phonological errors and their relative frequencies of occurrence. The second was used to fit data from an experimental technique designed to create these errors under controlled conditions.
Book
In Speaking, Willem "Pim" Levelt, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, accomplishes the formidable task of covering the entire process of speech production, from constraints on conversational appropriateness to articulation and self-monitoring of speech. Speaking is unique in its balanced coverage of all major aspects of the production of speech, in the completeness of its treatment of the entire speech process, and in its strategy of exemplifying rather than formalizing theoretical issues. Bradford Books imprint
Chapter
Control of speaking breaks down in tongue twisters. This study explored some of the variables which contribute to making a legitimate English sequence error-prone. Three experiments are reported, all using two syllable items, which looked at the effects of segmental similarity and syllable structure. It turned out that both variables affected performance, and that the kinds of errors produced have not been previously reported in the ‘slips’ literature. The results are discussed in terms of the model framework proposed by Shaffer (1976).
Article
A number of elements have been suggested as units of sublexical processing during planning for speech production, some derived from grammatical theory and some from observed variations and constancies in the acoustic and articulatory patterns of speech. Candidates range from muscle-group control mechanisms to distinctive features, individual phonemic segments, diphones, demisyllables, syllable onsets and rhymes, and even syllables themselves. Proposals vary widely, partly because different levels of processing are being modeled, but also because the production planning process is highly complex, and our understanding of its many aspects is still quite rudimentary. To cite just a few areas where our models are particularly primitive, little is known about the planning mechanisms that might impose serial order on abstractly represented units, those that integrate adjacent elements with each other, those that coordinate all of the factors influencing segment duration, and those that compute motor commands; even less is known about the relationships among such possible processing components.
Article
investigate the properties of inner speech in a somewhat unusual way, by looking at the "tongue" slips that seem to occur in it / the first experiment compared inner slips that [adult] subjects reported "hearing" when imagining tongue twisters with the overt slips that a different group of subjects made when saying the same stimuli aloud / the second experiment extended this comparison to practice effects / the subjects either mentally or overtly practiced saying tongue twisters, and the effect of this practice on the frequency of slips in both inner and overt speech was assessed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
The purpose of the present study was to see whether the covert repair hypothesis, which views normal disfluencies as the by-products of covert self-repairing of internal speech (programming) errors, applies to habitual stutterers. To this end, we examined the effects of emphasis on speech accuracy in stutterers on three sorts of incidents: speech errors, disfluencies (also including stuttering), and self-repairs. In a condition in which they performed a speech task under instructions stressing the accuracy of speaking, stutterers made considerably fewer speech errors, than in a condition in which speech accuracy could be ignored. On the other hand, disfluency and self-repair rates remained about the same. They did increase, however, relative to speech error rates with accuracy emphasis. A control group of normal speakers performed in a similar way. Apparently, disfluencies behaved like self-repairs. These results support the covert repair hypothesis of disfluency, both for stutterers and for normal speakers.
Article
In this study, the maximum speaking rates of 19 stutterers and 19 nonstutterers were measured for three speech conditions: silent, lipped, and overt. Two types of stimulus sentences were used: tongue twisters and matched control sentences. The data show that stutterers are slower than nonstutterers for each combination of stimulus type and speech condition. The difference between stutterers and nonstutterers is larger for lipped speech than for silent speech and is strongest in the overt condition. These results suggest that speech planning is impaired in stutterers. Speech execution may be independently affected, or, alternatively, the planning impairment may have stronger repercussions with actual speech motor execution.
Article
Three experiments examined the time course of phonological encoding in speech production. A new methodology is introduced in which subjects are required to monitor their internal speech production for prespecified target segments and syllables. Experiment 1 demonstrated that word initial target segments are monitored significantly faster than second syllable initial target segments. The addition of a concurrent articulation task (Experiment 1b) had a limited effect on performance, excluding the possibility that subjects are monitoring a subvocal articulation of the carrier word. Moreover, no relationship was observed between the pattern of monitoring latencies and the timing of the targets in subjects′ overt speech. Subjects are not, therefore, monitoring an internal phonetic representation of the carrier word. Experiment 2 used the production monitoring task to replicate the syllable monitoring effect observed in speech perception experiments: responses to targets were faster when they corresponded to the initial syllable of the carrier word than when they did not. We conclude that subjects are monitoring their internal generation of a syllabified phonological representation. Experiment 3 provides more detailed evidence concerning the time course of the generation of this representation by comparing monitoring latencies to targets within, as well as between, syllables. Some amendments to current models of phonological encoding are suggested in light of these results.
Article
The controversial question of the scope of sensory control in the voluntary motor patterns involved in speech is examined by reviewing studies in which the auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive feedback channels have been distorted or interrupted. The author makes a case for open loop control of well-learned speech patterns under normal circumstances. The concept of internal feedback is introduced as a possible control system of skilled speech, whereas response feedback and external feedback are viewed as necessary for children developing speech or adults learning new speech patterns.
Article
The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between the reading rates of stutterers and nonstutterers during both silent and oral reading of fluently spoken words. Ten adult stutterers and 14 nonstutterers were instructed to read two lists of words over four trials each. The first trial of either the first or the second list was a silent reading trial. All the other trials were oral reading trials. The word lists consisted of nouns with word lengths from two to five syllables. The dependent variables were the silent and oral reading times per word and per syllable. The major findings were that stutterers, as compared to nonstutterers, required longer reading times per word and per syllable during both silent and oral reading. These results indicate that stutterers differ from nonstutterers in the basic processing time for verbal material.
Article
Speech error data have been used to argue for the psychological reality of distinctive features and phonemes as well as the hierarchical ordering levels of processing for speech production. The models of production that have emerged from analysis of these data are nearly unanimous in characterizing (implicitly or explicitly) the motor output level as entirely governed by prior selection and processing of larger units, especially the phoneme. This study reports on the laboratory elicitation of sublexical speech errors by means of tongue twisters. Simultaneous audio and electromyographic recordings were analyzed. Where possible, single-motor unit discrimination was carried out to preclude the possibility of signal contamination by activation of adjacent musculature. The results indicate that traditional methods of data collection on which most speech error corpora are based are inadequate. Production models based on these corpora are not supported by the electromyographic data and must accordingly be revised.
Article
In this study the relationship between speech errors (deviations from a speech plan), disfluencies (interruptions in the execution of a speech plan), and self-repairs (corrections of speech errors) was examined. Two hypotheses were formulated: Either disfluencies are special types of speech errors, or they resemble self-repairs (i.e., they are corrective actions applied to anticipated, internal errors). To test these two hypotheses, patterns of speech errors, disfluencies, and self-repairs were compared in a task in which speakers recited stimulus sentences four times in succession under time pressure. Subjects in one condition were explicitly instructed to pay close attention to accuracy of speaking. In another condition subjects were told that speech accuracy was not important. A much lower speech error rate was found in the higher-accuracy condition, but rates of disfluencies and self-repairs did not differ significantly between the two accuracy conditions. This is regarded as support for the self-repair account of disfluencies. When accuracy of speaking is stressed, speakers tend to avoid and repair speech errors at the cost of reduced speech fluency.
Article
Making a self-repair in speech typically proceeds in three phases. The first phase involves the monitoring of one's own speech and the interruption of the flow of speech when trouble is detected. From an analysis of 959 spontaneous self-repairs it appears that interrupting follows detection promptly, with the exception that correct words tend to be completed. Another finding is that detection of trouble improves towards the end of constituents. The second phase is characterized by hesitation, pausing, but especially the use of so-called editing terms. Which editing term is used depends on the nature of the speech trouble in a rather regular fashion: Speech errors induce other editing terms than words that are merely inappropriate, and trouble which is detected quickly by the speaker is preferably signalled by the use of ‘uh’. The third phase consists of making the repair proper. The linguistic well-formedness of a repair is not dependent on the speaker's respecting the integrity of constituents, but on the structural relation between original utterance and repair. A bi-conditional well-formedness rule links this relation to a corresponding relation between the conjuncts of a coordination. It is suggested that a similar relation holds also between question and answer. In all three cases the speaker respects certain structural commitments derived from an original utterance. It was finally shown that the editing term plus the first word of the repair proper almost always contain sufficient information for the listener to decide how the repair should be related to the original utterance. Speakers almost never produce misleading information in this respect.
Article
The first, theoretical part of this paper sketches a framework for phonological encoding in which the speaker successively generates phonological syllables in connected speech. The final stage of this process, phonetic encoding, consists of accessing articulatory gestural scores for each of these syllables in a "mental syllabary". The second, experimental part studies various predictions derived from this theory. The main finding is a syllable frequency effect: words ending in a high-frequent syllable are named faster than words ending in a low-frequent syllable. As predicted, this syllable frequency effect is independent of and additive to the effect of word frequency on naming latency. The effect, moreover, is not due to the complexity of the word-final syllable. In the General Discussion, the syllabary model is further elaborated with respect to phonological underspecification and activation spreading. Alternative accounts of the empirical findings in terms of core syllables and demisyllables are considered.
Article
Self-repairing of speech errors demonstrates that speakers possess a monitoring device with which they verify the correctness of the speech flow. There is substantial evidence that this speech monitor not only comprises an auditory component (i.e., hearing one's own speech), but also an internal part: inspection of the speech program prior to its motoric execution. Errors thus may be detected before they are actually articulated. In the covert repair hypothesis of disfluency, this internal error detection possibility has been extended with an internal correction counterpart. Basically, the covert repair hypothesis contends that disfluencies reflect the interfering side-effects of covert, prearticulatory repairing of speech programming errors on the ongoing speech. Internally detecting and correcting an error obstructs the concurrent articulation in such manner that a disfluent speech event will result. Further, it is shown how, by combining a small number of typical overt self-repair features such as interrupting after error detection, retracing in an utterance, and marking the correction with editing terms, one can parsimoniously account for the specific forms disfluencies are known to take. This reasoning is argued to apply to both normal and stuttered disfluency. With respect to the crucial question concerning what makes stuttering speakers so greatly disfluent, it is hypothesized that their abilities to generate error-free speech programs are disordered. Hence, abundant stuttering derives from the need to repeatedly repair one's speech programs before their speech motor execution.
The non-anomalous nature of speech errors
  • V A Fromkin
Postions of errors in tongue twisters and spontaneous speech: Evidence for two processing mechanisms?
  • S Shattuck-Hufnagel
Speech errors as evidence for a serial-ordering mechanism in sentence production
  • S Shattuck-Hufnagel
Phonological and lexical encoding: An analysis of naturally occurring and experimentally elicited speech errors. Doctoral dissertation
  • G S Dell
Doctoral dissertation
  • G S Dell