@article {508,
	title = {Exploring articulation rate entrainment: Interactions over Zoom between typical and atypical speakers},
	year = {2022},
	publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen},
	address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands},
	abstract = {Speakers are known to change their speech to become more similar to the speech of their interlocutor [e.g. 2]. This phenomenon is extensively investigated in typical speakers and is known as entrainment, or e.g., alignment, accommodation. Entrainment has been found to help speakers in multiple ways, e.g., better task success or higher likeability [3, 4]. However, this process has received less attention in atypical speakers, while entrainment may indeed help these speakers [1]. In this study, we explore whether typical speakers entrain more to atypical speakers than to typical speakers when they are in interaction with an interlocutor over Zoom. More specifically, we study articulation rate of typical speakers in conversation with other typical speakers and with speakers who stutter. We furthermore elaborate on the challenges of these analyses using speech recorded via Zoom. 

Forty participants (twenty pairs) participated in this study. Ten pairs of typical speakers and ten different pairs of typical-atypical speakers performed two tasks. First, they performed a picture description by themselves, and then interacted with another speaker to find the differences between pictures in three rounds of the Diapix task [5] over Zoom, lasting around 20 to 30 minutes on average. 

We will elaborate on the pre-processing steps and challenges of working with speech recorded over Zoom. Moreover, we will compare articulation rate within speaker between the picture description and the Diapix task, and between the speakers of a pair during the Diapix task. Statistical analyses are being conducted and results will be ready before the Day of the Phonetics. 

References 

[1] Borrie, S. A., \& Liss, J. M. (2014). Rhythm as a coordinating device: Entrainment with disordered speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(3), 815-824. 
[2] Pardo, J. S. (2006). On phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(4), 2382-2393. 
[3] Reitter, D., \& Moore, J. D. (2014). Alignment and task success in spoken dialogue. Journal of Memory and Language, 76, 29-46. 
[4] Schweitzer, A., \& Lewandowski, N. (2013). Convergence of articulation rate in spontaneous speech. In INTERSPEECH, pp. 525-529. 
[5] Van Engen, K. J., Baese-Berk, M., Baker, R. E., Choi, A., Kim, M., \& Bradlow, A. R. (2010). The Wildcat Corpus of native-and foreign-accented English: Communicative efficiency across conversational dyads with varying language alignment profiles. Language and speech, 53(4), 510-54
},
	author = {Lotte Eijk and Meekings, Sophie}
}
@article {488,
	title = {Phonetic alignment of /x/ in interaction},
	year = {2021},
	publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen},
	address = {online},
	abstract = {Alignment is the process of adapting speech to another interlocutor{\textquoteright}s speech. We investigated phonetic alignment to two variants of the Dutch /x/, also known as the {\textquotedblleft}hard g{\textquotedblright} or {\textquotedblleft}soft g{\textquotedblright}. We set out to explore whether phonetic alignment is caused only by short-term priming, long-term priming or by speakers remembering features of the speech of their interlocutor. Phonetic alignment effects are usually found in rather controlled environments (e.g., shadowing tasks; Pardo et al., 2013) or using an AXB assessment (Pardo, 2006). We studied this phenomenon in less constricted environments and using automatised measurements. 

Participants interacted with two different confederates, one producing a {\textquotedblleft}hard g{\textquotedblright} and one a {\textquotedblleft}soft g{\textquotedblright} in a sentence completion task. Participants completed a total of 268 sentences. In a pre-test, participants first completed sentences by themselves. Then, they interacted with Confederate 1 in Round 1, with Confederate 2 in Round 2, and again with Confederate 1 in a so-called inter-test and in Round 3, and lastly by themselves again in the post-test. 

We investigated the duration (van der Harst, van de Velde \& Schouten, 2007) and Centre of Gravity of the 15085 fricatives of 36 participants. We investigated three different predictors: the last produced /x/ of the confederate, the average of the ten last produced /x/s of the confederate and the average of all heard /x/s. None of the predictors showed significant effects. Descriptive analyses showed tremendous variation among speakers, likely unrelated to alignment. We conclude that alignment at the sound level is not as clear as previously demonstrated in less ecologically valid studies. 

References 

Pardo, J. S. (2006). On phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(4), 2382-2393. 
Pardo, J. S., Jordan, K., Mallari, R., Scanlon, C., \& Lewandowski, E. (2013). Phonetic convergence in shadowed speech: The relation between acoustic and perceptual measures. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(3), 183-195. 
Van der Harst, S., Van de Velde, H., \& Schouten, B. (2007). Acoustic characteristics of Standard Dutch. age, 22(40), 45-60.
},
	author = {Lotte Eijk and Schriefers, Herbert and Mirjam Ernestus}
}
@article {447,
	title = {Exploring alignment in articulation rate},
	year = {2018},
	publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen},
	address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
	abstract = {Alignment is the phenomenon that interlocutors adapt their way of speaking to each other. It is still an open question why people align. We also do not know how long alignment lasts and whether speakers align faster to someone they have spoken to before. We conducted an experiment to obtain more insight in these questions by investigating articulation rate, which has previously been shown to show alignment, e.g. [1, 2].

The experiment consisted of a sentence completion task. Twenty-six native Dutch speakers interacted with a computer with the pre-recorded speech of two confederates. Participants started the experiment by completing a pre-test by themselves, after which they did three rounds: Round 1 (with Confederate 1), Round 2 (with Confederate 2) and Round 3 (with Confederate 1). This was then followed by a post-test in which they completed sentences by themselves again.

Articulation rates were measured over each round. Preliminary results indicate that participants spoke faster when speaking to a confederate than when they were speaking by themselves. This may be alignment because both confederates spoke more quickly than the participants in the pre-test. Interestingly, the higher Confederate 2{\textquoteright}s articulation rate, the slower participants spoke. This could be due to social factors. Lastly, the data suggest that articulation rate alignment lasts in the post-test: participants do not immediately return to their habitual articulation rate. This suggests alignment does not only consist of immediate priming of the preceding utterance.

References

[1] Levitan, R., \& Hirschberg, J. (2011). Measuring acoustic-prosodic entrainment with respect to multiple levels and dimensions. In Twelfth Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association.

[2] Schweitzer, A., \& Lewandowski, N. (2013, August). Convergence of articulation rate in spontaneous speech. In INTERSPEECH(pp. 525-529).
},
	author = {Lotte Eijk and Mirjam Ernestus and Herbert Schriefers}
}
