Project B05
(Limits of) variability in speech planning
PI(s): Prof. Dr. Audrey Bürki-Foschini
An important challenge for contemporary psycholinguistic research is to understand the processes by which speakers combine words with one another to produce utterances. A central issue in this endeavour concerns the scope of advanced planning, that is, how many words of an utterance speakers prepare before initiating the articulation of that utterance. Several authors suggest that the scope of advanced planning is variable – or flexible. The aim of this project is to determine the functions and extent of this variability and the constraints that operate to limit this variability. We hypothesize (1) that available cognitive resources play a major role in determining the scope of advanced planning for a given utterance, (2) that older speakers experience more difficulty under limited resources, and (3) that speakers can adjust the execution of articulatory gestures to maintain fluency under different planning scopes.
in Phase 1:
Variability and its limits in the time course of language production processes
PI(s): Prof. Dr. Audrey Bürki-Foschini
The aim of this project is to refine current psycholinguistic models of word production by integrating precise information about the dynamics of encoding processes, about the constraints that operate to limit the variability of these processes (i.e. speaker-specific variables and contextual factors) and about how the linguistic system interacts with other cognitive functions during actual speech production.
The results of our experiments so far highlight the role of sustained attention, both to explain inter-individual and intra-individual differences in naming performance. We further find that a large part of the observed inter-individual variability in the time required to prepare a vocal response originates in late encoding processes, i.e., the preparation of motor gestures (Bürki, submitted; Madec, Elbuy, Lorenz, & Bürki, in preparation). On-going experiments examine the role of age and task difficulty in speech production.
In the course of the project, we also addressed important methodological issues pertaining to the study of word production processes. First, we showed that inter-individual differences in the time required to prepare a vocal response impact the Electrophysiological signal, and render the estimation of the time course of events rather imprecise (Madec et al., in preparation). Second, we performed a series of meta-analyses of data collected with the picture-word interference paradigm, one of the most used paradigm in the field. Our work shows that the available evidence to date does not warrant strong conclusions about the functional origin of semantic interference effects (often used to index lexical access in previous studies, Bürki Elbuy, Madec, & Vasishth, 2020) and highlights the role of the properties of the experimental materials in interference effects (Bürki, Alario, & Vasishth, in preparation).
Members
Papers
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Published in | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bürki, A. | Variation in the speech signal as a window into the cognitive architecture of language production. | 2018 | Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(6), 1973-2004. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-017-1423-4 | |
| Bürki, A., Besana, T., Degiorgi, G., Gilbert, R., & Alario, F.-X. | Representation and selection of determiners with phonological variants. | 2019 | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(7), 1287-1315. DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000643 | |
| Bürki, A., Viebahn, M., & Gafos, A. I. | Plasticity and transfer in the sound system: exposure to syllables in production or perception changes their subsequent production. | 2020 | Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35(10), 1371-1393. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2020.1782445 | |
| Bürki, A., Elbuy, S., Madec, S., & Vasishth, S. | What did we learn from forty years of research on semantic interference? A Bayesian meta-analysis. | 2020 | Journal of Memory and Language, 114: 104125. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2020.104125 | |
| Jeong, H., van den Hoven, E., Madec, S., & Bürki, A. | Behavioral and Brain Responses Highlight the Role of Usage in the Preparation of Multiword Utterances for Production. | 2021 | Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(11), 2231-2264. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01757 | |
| Welby, P., Spinelli, E., & Bürki, A. | Spelling provides a precise (but sometimes misplaced) phonological target. Orthography and acoustic variability in second language word learning. | 2022 | Journal of Phonetics, 94, 101172 DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2022.101172 | |
| Bürki-Foschini, A., Alario, X., & Vasishth, S. | When words collide: Bayesian meta-analyses of distractor and target properties in the picture-word interference paradigm. | 2022 | Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. DOI: 10.1177/17470218221114644 | |
| Bürki, A., & Madec, S. | Picture-word interference in language production studies: Exploring the roles of attention and processing times. | 2022 | Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 48(7), 1019-1046. DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001098 | |
| Fuhrmeister, P., Madec, S., Lorenz, A., Elbuy, S., & Bürki, A. | Behavioral and EEG evidence for inter-individual variability in late encoding stages of word production. | 2022 | Language, Cognition and Neuroscience DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2022.2030483 | |
| Fuhrmeister, P., & Bürki, A. | Distributional properties of semantic interference in picture naming: Bayesian meta-analyses. | 2022 | Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(2), 635-647. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-021-02016-6 | |
| Ciaccio, L. A., Bürki, A., & Clahsen, H. | Inter-individual variability in morphological processing: An ERP study on German plurals. | 2023 | Journal of Neurolinguistics, 67, 101138. DOI: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2023.101138 |
