Displaying publications 1 - 20 of 34 in total

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  1. Fulltext An Inventory of Vowel Phonemes of the Melanau Rajang dialect
    MARINA KAWI, DAYANG SARIAH ABANG SUHAI
    Trends in Undergraduate Research, 2018;1(1):0-0.
    MyJurnal
    The study aims to identify an inventory of vowel phonemes of Melanau Rajang dialect in Belawai under the administration of Tanjung Manis District, Sarawak. This study is a field survey using interview methods to obtain data. A total 250 Swadesh list (Samarin, 1967) are used as a guide for data collection. In this study, two infotmants of different genders aged between 40 and 60 years old were selected based on criteria of informant selections according to Asmah Haji Omar (2001). In analysis data, qualitative method is used based on structural approaches. The findings show that there are eight (8) vowel phonemes have been identified; four (4) front vowels [i, e, ε, a]; one (1) central vowel [ə]; and three (3) back vowels [u, o, ɔ]. Besides that, the distribution/alternation of all vowel phonemes of Melanau Rajang dialect in Belawai are also discussed in this study. The findings also indicate that active vowel phonemes are vowels [a, i, u], while inactive vocal phonemes are vowels [ɔ, o, ε, ə, e].
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  2. Fulltext The development of Malay speech audiometry
    Mukari SZ, Said H
    Med J Malaysia, 1991 Sep;46(3):262-8.
    PMID: 1839923
    Speech audiometry is a method for assessing the ability of the auditory system using speech sounds as stimuli. A list of phonemically balanced bisyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (c-v-c-v) Malay words was produced. All the bisyllabic words (c-v-c-v) thought to be commonly used in everyday conversations were listed from the Dewan Bahasa dictionary and their suitability assessed. The chosen words were divided into 25 groups containing 10 words each. The list was then recorded by a professional male newscaster in a sound proof studio. A normal speech audiometry curve was obtained by testing 60 normal hearing subjects using the prerecorded speech material. The result of the study showed that the normal Malay speech audiometry curve was comparable to those of English and Arabic speech audiometry, in which it was sigmoidal with the optimum discrimination score of 40 dB and half peak level of 17.5 dB.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  3. Digital noise reduction in hearing aids and its acoustic effect on consonants /s/ and /z/
    Chong FY, Jenstad LM
    Med J Malaysia, 2018 12;73(6):365-370.
    PMID: 30647205
    INTRODUCTION: Modulation-based noise reduction (MBNR) is one of the common noise reduction methods used in hearing aids. Gain reduction in high frequency bands may occur for some implementations of MBNR and fricatives might be susceptible to alteration, given the high frequency components in fricative noise. The main objective of this study is to quantify the acoustic effect of MBNR on /s, z/.

    METHODS: Speech-and-noise signals were presented to, and recorded from, six hearing aids mounted on a head and torso simulator. Test stimuli were nonsense words mixed with pink, cafeteria, or speech-modulated noise at 0 dB SNR. Fricatives /s, z/ were extracted from the recordings for analysis.

    RESULTS: Analysis of the noise confirmed that MBNR in all hearing aids was activated for the recordings. More than 1.0 dB of acoustic change occurred to /s, z/ when MBNR was turned on in four out of the six hearing aids in the pink and cafeteria noise conditions. The acoustics of /s, z/ by female talkers were affected more than male talkers. Significant relationships between amount of noise reduction and acoustic change of /s, z/ were found. Amount of noise reduction accounts for 42.8% and 16.8% of the variability in acoustic change for /s/ and /z/ respectively.

    CONCLUSION: Some clinically-available implementations of MBNR have measurable effects on the acoustics of fricatives. Possible implications for speech perception are discussed.

    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  4. Emotional speech acoustic model for Malay: iterative versus isolated unit training
    Mustafa MB, Ainon RN
    J Acoust Soc Am, 2013 Oct;134(4):3057-66.
    PMID: 24116440 DOI: 10.1121/1.4818741
    The ability of speech synthesis system to synthesize emotional speech enhances the user's experience when using this kind of system and its related applications. However, the development of an emotional speech synthesis system is a daunting task in view of the complexity of human emotional speech. The more recent state-of-the-art speech synthesis systems, such as the one based on hidden Markov models, can synthesize emotional speech with acceptable naturalness with the use of a good emotional speech acoustic model. However, building an emotional speech acoustic model requires adequate resources including segment-phonetic labels of emotional speech, which is a problem for many under-resourced languages, including Malay. This research shows how it is possible to build an emotional speech acoustic model for Malay with minimal resources. To achieve this objective, two forms of initialization methods were considered: iterative training using the deterministic annealing expectation maximization algorithm and the isolated unit training. The seed model for the automatic segmentation is a neutral speech acoustic model, which was transformed to target emotion using two transformation techniques: model adaptation and context-dependent boundary refinement. Two forms of evaluation have been performed: an objective evaluation measuring the prosody error and a listening evaluation to measure the naturalness of the synthesized emotional speech.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  5. Normative nasalance scores for the Malay language
    Ibrahim HM, Reilly S, Kilpatrick N
    Cleft Palate Craniofac J, 2012 Sep;49(5):e61-3.
    PMID: 21787239 DOI: 10.1597/11-001
    To establish normative nasalance scores for a set of newly developed stimuli in Malay.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  6. Contributions of phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, and rapid automated naming, toward decoding ability in students with mild intellectual disability
    Soltani A, Roslan S
    Res Dev Disabil, 2013 Mar;34(3):1090-9.
    PMID: 23314249 DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2012.12.005
    Reading decoding ability is a fundamental skill to acquire word-specific orthographic information necessary for skilled reading. Decoding ability and its underlying phonological processing skills have been heavily investigated typically among developing students. However, the issue has rarely been noticed among students with intellectual disability who commonly suffer from reading decoding problems. This study is aimed at determining the contributions of phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, and rapid automated naming, as three well known phonological processing skills, to decoding ability among 60 participants with mild intellectual disability of unspecified origin ranging from 15 to 23 years old. The results of the correlation analysis revealed that all three aspects of phonological processing are significantly correlated with decoding ability. Furthermore, a series of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that after controlling the effect of IQ, phonological awareness, and rapid automated naming are two distinct sources of decoding ability, but phonological short-term memory significantly contributes to decoding ability under the realm of phonological awareness.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  7. Fulltext Differential coding of perception in the world's languages
    Majid A, Roberts SG, Cilissen L, Emmorey K, Nicodemus B, O'Grady L, et al.
    Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2018 Nov 06;115(45):11369-11376.
    PMID: 30397135 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1720419115
    Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to be better at communicating about sight and hearing than the other senses, and decades of work based on English and related languages certainly suggests this is true. However, how well does this reflect the diversity of languages and communities worldwide? To test whether there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, stimuli from the five basic senses were used to elicit descriptions in 20 diverse languages, including 3 unrelated sign languages. We found that languages differ fundamentally in which sensory domains they linguistically code systematically, and how they do so. The tendency for better coding in some domains can be explained in part by cultural preoccupations. Although languages seem free to elaborate specific sensory domains, some general tendencies emerge: for example, with some exceptions, smell is poorly coded. The surprise is that, despite the gradual phylogenetic accumulation of the senses, and the imbalances in the neural tissue dedicated to them, no single hierarchy of the senses imposes itself upon language.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  8. Fulltext Severity-based adaptation with limited data for ASR to aid dysarthric speakers
    Mustafa MB, Salim SS, Mohamed N, Al-Qatab B, Siong CE
    PLoS One, 2014;9(1):e86285.
    PMID: 24466004 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0086285
    Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is currently used in many assistive technologies, such as helping individuals with speech impairment in their communication ability. One challenge in ASR for speech-impaired individuals is the difficulty in obtaining a good speech database of impaired speakers for building an effective speech acoustic model. Because there are very few existing databases of impaired speech, which are also limited in size, the obvious solution to build a speech acoustic model of impaired speech is by employing adaptation techniques. However, issues that have not been addressed in existing studies in the area of adaptation for speech impairment are as follows: (1) identifying the most effective adaptation technique for impaired speech; and (2) the use of suitable source models to build an effective impaired-speech acoustic model. This research investigates the above-mentioned two issues on dysarthria, a type of speech impairment affecting millions of people. We applied both unimpaired and impaired speech as the source model with well-known adaptation techniques like the maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) and the constrained-MLLR(C-MLLR). The recognition accuracy of each impaired speech acoustic model is measured in terms of word error rate (WER), with further assessments, including phoneme insertion, substitution and deletion rates. Unimpaired speech when combined with limited high-quality speech-impaired data improves performance of ASR systems in recognising severely impaired dysarthric speech. The C-MLLR adaptation technique was also found to be better than MLLR in recognising mildly and moderately impaired speech based on the statistical analysis of the WER. It was found that phoneme substitution was the biggest contributing factor in WER in dysarthric speech for all levels of severity. The results show that the speech acoustic models derived from suitable adaptation techniques improve the performance of ASR systems in recognising impaired speech with limited adaptation data.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  9. Fulltext High variability phonetic training in adaptive adverse conditions is rapid, effective, and sustained
    Leong CXR, Price JM, Pitchford NJ, van Heuven WJB
    PLoS One, 2018;13(10):e0204888.
    PMID: 30300372 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204888
    This paper evaluates a novel high variability phonetic training paradigm that involves presenting spoken words in adverse conditions. The effectiveness, generalizability, and longevity of this high variability phonetic training in adverse conditions was evaluated using English phoneme contrasts in three experiments with Malaysian multilinguals. Adverse conditions were created by presenting spoken words against background multi-talker babble. In Experiment 1, the adverse condition level was set at a fixed level throughout the training and in Experiment 2 the adverse condition level was determined for each participant before training using an adaptive staircase procedure. To explore the effectiveness and sustainability of the training, phonemic discrimination ability was assessed before and immediately after training (Experiments 1 and 2) and 6 months after training (Experiment 3). Generalization of training was evaluated within and across phonemic contrasts using trained and untrained stimuli. Results revealed significant perceptual improvements after just three 20-minute training sessions and these improvements were maintained after 6 months. The training benefits also generalized from trained to untrained stimuli. Crucially, perceptual improvements were significantly larger when the adverse conditions were adapted before each training session than when it was set at a fixed level. As the training improvements observed here are markedly larger than those reported in the literature, this indicates that the individualized phonetic training regime in adaptive adverse conditions (HVPT-AAC) is highly effective at improving speech perception.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  10. Fulltext Particle swarm optimization based feature enhancement and feature selection for improved emotion recognition in speech and glottal signals
    Muthusamy H, Polat K, Yaacob S
    PLoS One, 2015;10(3):e0120344.
    PMID: 25799141 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120344
    In the recent years, many research works have been published using speech related features for speech emotion recognition, however, recent studies show that there is a strong correlation between emotional states and glottal features. In this work, Mel-frequency cepstralcoefficients (MFCCs), linear predictive cepstral coefficients (LPCCs), perceptual linear predictive (PLP) features, gammatone filter outputs, timbral texture features, stationary wavelet transform based timbral texture features and relative wavelet packet energy and entropy features were extracted from the emotional speech (ES) signals and its glottal waveforms(GW). Particle swarm optimization based clustering (PSOC) and wrapper based particle swarm optimization (WPSO) were proposed to enhance the discerning ability of the features and to select the discriminating features respectively. Three different emotional speech databases were utilized to gauge the proposed method. Extreme learning machine (ELM) was employed to classify the different types of emotions. Different experiments were conducted and the results show that the proposed method significantly improves the speech emotion recognition performance compared to previous works published in the literature.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  11. Fulltext Acoustic change complex in background noise: phoneme level and timing effects
    Billings CJ, Grush LD, Maamor N
    Physiol Rep, 2017 Nov;5(20).
    PMID: 29051305 DOI: 10.14814/phy2.13464
    The effects of background noise on speech-evoked cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) can provide insight into the physiology of the auditory system. The purpose of this study was to determine background noise effects on neural coding of different phonemes within a syllable. CAEPs were recorded from 15 young normal-hearing adults in response to speech signals /s/, /ɑ/, and /sɑ/. Signals were presented at varying signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The effects of SNR and context (in isolation or within syllable) were analyzed for both phonemes. For all three stimuli, latencies generally decreased and amplitudes generally increased as SNR improved, and context effects were not present; however, the amplitude of the /ɑ/ response was the exception, showing no SNR effect and a significant context effect. Differential coding of /s/ and /ɑ/ likely result from level and timing differences. Neural refractoriness may result in the lack of a robust SNR effect on amplitude in the syllable context. The stable amplitude across SNRs in response to the vowel in /sɑ/ suggests the combined effects of (1) acoustic characteristics of the syllable and noise at poor SNRs and (2) refractory effects resulting from phoneme timing at good SNRs. Results provide insights into the coding of multiple-onset speech syllables in varying levels of background noise and, together with behavioral measures, may help to improve our understanding of speech-perception-in-noise difficulties.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  12. Lexical analyses of the function and phonology of Papuan Malay word stress
    Kaland C, Kluge A, van Heuven VJ
    Phonetica, 2021 04 27;78(2):141-168.
    PMID: 33892529 DOI: 10.1515/phon-2021-2003
    The existence of word stress in Indonesian languages has been controversial. Recent acoustic analyses of Papuan Malay suggest that this language has word stress, counter to other studies and unlike closely related languages. The current study further investigates Papuan Malay by means of lexical (non-acoustic) analyses of two different aspects of word stress. In particular, this paper reports two distribution analyses of a word corpus, 1) investigating the extent to which stress patterns may help word recognition and 2) exploring the phonological factors that predict the distribution of stress patterns. The facilitating role of stress patterns in word recognition was investigated in a lexical analysis of word embeddings. The results show that Papuan Malay word stress (potentially) helps to disambiguate words. As for stress predictors, a random forest analysis investigated the effect of multiple morpho-phonological factors on stress placement. It was found that the mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ play a central role in stress placement, refining the conclusions of previous work that mainly focused on /ɛ/. The current study confirms that non-acoustic research on stress can complement acoustic research in important ways. Crucially, the combined findings on stress in Papuan Malay so far give rise to an integrated perspective to word stress, in which phonetic, phonological and cognitive factors are considered.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  13. Fulltext The role of f0 shape and phrasal position in Papuan Malay and American English word identification
    Kaland C, Gordon MK
    Phonetica, 2022 Jun 27;79(3):219-245.
    PMID: 35981718 DOI: 10.1515/phon-2022-2022
    The prosodic structure of under-researched languages in the Trade Malay language family is poorly understood. Although boundary marking has been uncontroversially shown as the major prosodic function in these languages, studies on the use of pitch accents to highlight important words in a phrase remain inconclusive. In addition, most knowledge of pitch accents is based on well-researched languages such as the ones from the Western-Germanic language family. This paper reports two word identification experiments comparing Papuan Malay with the pitch accent language American English, in order to investigate the extent to which the demarcating and highlighting function of prosody can be disentangled. To this end, target words were presented to native listeners of both languages and differed with respect to their position in the phrase (medial or final) and the shape of their f0 movement (original or manipulated). Reaction times for the target word identifications revealed overall faster responses for original and final words compared to manipulated and medial ones. The results add to previous findings on the facilitating effect of pitch accents and further improve our prosodic knowledge of underresearched languages.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  14. Fulltext Phonological acquisition among Malaysian English child speakers of Indian descent
    Joseph, Pamela Thomas
    Jurnal Sains Kesihatan Malaysia, 2006;4(2):13-26.
    MyJurnal
    This preliminary study aims to provide an initial description of phonological acquisition among Malaysian Children of Indian descent aged two to six years. The description of the consonantal phonemic inventory as well as various Phonological processes evidenced by subjects is also reported. The mothers’ phonemic inventory was obtained as the representation of the children’s most active environmental linguistic input. Speech samples of the mothers as well as the subjects were obtained from a single word test and narrative test. The speech sample was recorded and transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The results of the tests revealed a significant correspondence between the subjects' phonemic inventory and their mothers’ except for the following phonemes: /ð/ , /θ/ , /v/ and /w/. Both mothers and subjects demonstrated free variation for the production of /v/ and /w/. The mothers displayed a range of 21-23 phonemes in their inventories whereas the subjects displayed a range of 17-21 phonemes. The age acquisition for some phonemes, namely the affricates which was evidenced by subject aged 2;4 were noted to be earlier than that of subjects in past studies. Rapid phonological development was evidenced at the age of 2;4- 3;7.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
  15. Acoustic characteristics of vowels by normal Malaysian Malay young adults
    Ting HN, Chia SY, Abdul Hamid B, Mukari SZ
    J Voice, 2011 Nov;25(6):e305-9.
    PMID: 21429707 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2010.05.007
    The acoustic characteristics of sustained vowel have been widely investigated across various languages and ethnic groups. These acoustic measures, including fundamental frequency (F(0)), jitter (Jitt), relative average perturbation (RAP), five-point period perturbation quotient (PPQ5), shimmer (Shim), and 11-point amplitude perturbation quotient (APQ11) are not well established for Malaysian Malay young adults. This article studies the acoustic measures of Malaysian Malay adults using acoustical analysis. The study analyzed six sustained Malay vowels of 60 normal native Malaysian Malay adults with a mean of 21.19 years. The F(0) values of Malaysian Malay males and females were reported as 134.85±18.54 and 238.27±24.06Hz, respectively. Malaysian Malay females had significantly higher F(0) than that of males for all the vowels. However, no significant differences were observed between the genders for the perturbation measures in all the vowels, except RAP in /e/. No significant F(0) differences between the vowels were observed. Significant differences between the vowels were reported for all perturbation measures in Malaysian Malay males. As for Malaysian Malay females, significant differences between the vowels were reported for Shim and APQ11. Multiethnic comparisons indicate that F(0) varies between Malaysian Malay and other ethnic groups. However, the perturbation measures cannot be directly compared, where the measures vary significantly across different speech analysis softwares.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  16. Formant frequencies of Malay vowels produced by Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years
    Ting HN, Zourmand A, Chia SY, Yong BF, Abdul Hamid B
    J Voice, 2012 Sep;26(5):664.e1-6.
    PMID: 22285457 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2011.08.008
    The formant frequencies of Malaysian Malay children have not been well studied. This article investigates the first four formant frequencies of sustained vowels in 360 Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years using acoustical analysis. Generally, Malay female children had higher formant frequencies than those of their male counterparts. However, no significant differences in all four formant frequencies were observed between the Malay male and female children in most of the vowels and age groups. Significant differences in all formant frequencies were found across the Malay vowels in both Malay male and female children for all age groups except for F4 in female children aged 12 years. Generally, the Malaysian Malay children showed a nonsystematic decrement in formant frequencies with age. Low levels of significant differences in formant frequencies were observed across the age groups in most of the vowels for F1, F3, and F4 in Malay male children and F1 and F4 in Malay female children.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  17. Vocal fundamental frequency and perturbation measurements of vowels by normal Malaysian Chinese adults
    Ting HN, Chia SY, Kim KS, Sim SL, Abdul Hamid B
    J Voice, 2011 Nov;25(6):e311-7.
    PMID: 21376529 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2010.05.004
    The acoustic properties of vowel phonation vary across cultures. These specific characteristics, including vowel fundamental frequency (F(0)) and perturbation measures (Absolute Jitter [Jita], Jitter [Jitt], Relative Average Perturbation [RAP], five-point Period Perturbation Quotient [PPQ5], Absolute Shimmer [ShdB], Shimmer [Shim], and 11-point Amplitude Perturbation Quotient [APQ11]) are not well established for Malaysian Chinese adults. This article investigates the F(0) and perturbation measurements of sustained vowels in 60 normal Malaysian Chinese adults using acoustical analysis. Malaysian Chinese females had significantly higher F(0) than Malaysian males in all six vowels. However, there were no significant differences in F(0) across the vowels for each gender. Significant differences between vowels were observed for Jita, Jitt, PPQ5, ShdB, Shim, and APQ11 among Chinese males, whereas significant differences between vowels were observed for all the perturbation parameters among Chinese females. Chinese males had significantly higher Jita and APQ11 in the vowels than Chinese females, whereas no significant differences were observed between males and females for Jitt, RAP, PPQ5, and Shim. Cross-ethnic comparisons indicate that F(0) of vowel phonation varies within the Chinese ethnic group and across other ethnic groups. The perturbation measures cannot be simply compared, where the measures may vary significantly across different speech analysis softwares.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  18. Gender classification in children based on speech characteristics: using fundamental and formant frequencies of Malay vowels
    Zourmand A, Ting HN, Mirhassani SM
    J Voice, 2013 Mar;27(2):201-9.
    PMID: 23473455 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2012.12.006
    Speech is one of the prevalent communication mediums for humans. Identifying the gender of a child speaker based on his/her speech is crucial in telecommunication and speech therapy. This article investigates the use of fundamental and formant frequencies from sustained vowel phonation to distinguish the gender of Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years. The Euclidean minimum distance and multilayer perceptron were used to classify the gender of 360 Malay children based on different combinations of fundamental and formant frequencies (F0, F1, F2, and F3). The Euclidean minimum distance with normalized frequency data achieved a classification accuracy of 79.44%, which was higher than that of the nonnormalized frequency data. Age-dependent modeling was used to improve the accuracy of gender classification. The Euclidean distance method obtained 84.17% based on the optimal classification accuracy for all age groups. The accuracy was further increased to 99.81% using multilayer perceptron based on mel-frequency cepstral coefficients.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  19. Perceptual processing of Mandarin nasals by L1 and L2 Mandarin speakers
    Lai YH
    J Psycholinguist Res, 2012 Aug;41(4):237-52.
    PMID: 22089521 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-011-9190-2
    Nasals are cross-linguistically susceptible to change, especially in the syllable final position. Acoustic reports on Mandarin nasal production have recently shown that the syllable-final distinction is frequently dropped. Few studies, however, have addressed the issue of perceptual processing in Mandarin nasals for L1 and L2 speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The current paper addressed to what extent and in what directions L1 and L2 speakers of Mandarin differed in perceiving Mandarin nasals. Possible variables, including the linguistic backgrounds (i.e. L1 vs. L2 speakers of Mandarin Chinese), the vocalic contexts (i.e. [i, ə, a, y, ua, uə, ia]) and the phonetic settings (i.e. syllable-initial vs. syllable-final), were discussed. Asymmetrical findings in the current investigation indicated limitations of speech learning theories developed from European languages in the context of Mandarin nasals. A tri-dimensional model was thus suggested for interpreting the cognitive mechanism in Mandarin nasal perception.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics*
  20. Fulltext Listening while reading promotes word learning from stories
    Valentini A, Ricketts J, Pye RE, Houston-Price C
    J Exp Child Psychol, 2018 03;167:10-31.
    PMID: 29154028 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.09.022
    Reading and listening to stories fosters vocabulary development. Studies of single word learning suggest that new words are more likely to be learned when both their oral and written forms are provided, compared with when only one form is given. This study explored children's learning of phonological, orthographic, and semantic information about words encountered in a story context. A total of 71 children (8- and 9-year-olds) were exposed to a story containing novel words in one of three conditions: (a) listening, (b) reading, or (c) simultaneous listening and reading ("combined" condition). Half of the novel words were presented with a definition, and half were presented without a definition. Both phonological and orthographic learning were assessed through recognition tasks. Semantic learning was measured using three tasks assessing recognition of each word's category, subcategory, and definition. Phonological learning was observed in all conditions, showing that phonological recoding supported the acquisition of phonological forms when children were not exposed to phonology (the reading condition). In contrast, children showed orthographic learning of the novel words only when they were exposed to orthographic forms, indicating that exposure to phonological forms alone did not prompt the establishment of orthographic representations. Semantic learning was greater in the combined condition than in the listening and reading conditions. The presence of the definition was associated with better performance on the semantic subcategory and definition posttests but not on the phonological, orthographic, or category posttests. Findings are discussed in relation to the lexical quality hypothesis and the availability of attentional resources.
    Matched MeSH terms: Phonetics
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