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The effects of noise on identification of topic changes in discourse Tidball, Glynnis Anne
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate how adverse listening conditions affect the ability of normal-hearing listeners to identify the boundaries between discourse topics, or when "what is being talked about" has changed. Twelve subjects (21 to 35 years) listened to digitized recordings of a single speaker's monologues presented in three background noise conditions (+5, 0 and -5 dB S:N). Subjects were asked to push a button when they thought that a change of topic was about to occur in the monologue. Subject responses were analyzed for the latency of topic boundary identification and the number and location of responses. The role of prosodic cues in the identification of topic boundaries was also evaluated. It was found that as the listening condition became less favourable, listeners were slower to identify topic boundaries, were less certain as to where topic boundaries occurred, and relied more heavily on cues to topic initiation than on cues to topic termination for identification of topic boundaries. It was also shown that as the signal-tonoise ratio decreased, listeners were less able to utilize cues to topic boundary that are present in low amplitude utterances such as pitch range and contour, laryngealization and pre-boundary syllable lengthening, but that listeners relied on the prosodic cue of pause duration to identify topic boundaries equally in all three listening conditions.
Item Metadata
Title |
The effects of noise on identification of topic changes in discourse
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1995
|
Description |
The purpose of the present study was to investigate how adverse listening conditions
affect the ability of normal-hearing listeners to identify the boundaries between discourse
topics, or when "what is being talked about" has changed. Twelve subjects (21 to 35 years)
listened to digitized recordings of a single speaker's monologues presented in three
background noise conditions (+5, 0 and -5 dB S:N). Subjects were asked to push a button
when they thought that a change of topic was about to occur in the monologue. Subject
responses were analyzed for the latency of topic boundary identification and the number and
location of responses. The role of prosodic cues in the identification of topic boundaries was
also evaluated. It was found that as the listening condition became less favourable, listeners
were slower to identify topic boundaries, were less certain as to where topic boundaries
occurred, and relied more heavily on cues to topic initiation than on cues to topic
termination for identification of topic boundaries. It was also shown that as the signal-tonoise
ratio decreased, listeners were less able to utilize cues to topic boundary that are
present in low amplitude utterances such as pitch range and contour, laryngealization and
pre-boundary syllable lengthening, but that listeners relied on the prosodic cue of pause
duration to identify topic boundaries equally in all three listening conditions.
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Extent |
6959081 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-01-15
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0086923
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1995-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.