Listening in a Multilingual World: The Challenges of Second Language (L2) Listening

Research into language acquisition and oral language use was examined in order to identify key factors that contribute to the successful acquisition of second language (L2) listening ability. The factors were grouped into three major domains: affective, cognitive, and interpersonal. It is claimed that in each domain, proficient L2 listeners have developed strategies, that is, plans of conscious action, in order to address persistent challenges of L2 acquisition. For the affective domain, the strategies concern development of resilience in order to maintain long-term motivation and investment of identity as an active user of the L2. For the cognitive domain, the strategies involve relearning the phonological system of the L2 as an independent system in order to counteract native language influences and using compensation tactics to supplement the influences of semantic organization of one’s native language. For the interpersonal domain, the strategies involve accommodation to communication styles and a task orientation to interaction. Research is reviewed from cognitive psychology, neurolinguistics, pragmatics, bilingualism studies, and language pedagogy, with the aim of identifying particular obstacles faced by L2 listeners and practical approaches used to cope with them.     

Mid-Adolescents’ and Adults’ Recognition of Vocal Cues of Emotion and Social Intent: Differences by Expression and Speaker Age

Previous research has suggested that the ability to recognize vocal portrayals of socio-emotional expressions improves with age throughout childhood and adolescence. The current study examined whether stimulus-level factors (i.e., the age of the speaker and the type of expression being conveyed) interacted with listeners’ developmental stage to predict listeners’ recognition accuracy. We assessed mid-adolescent (n = 50, aged 13–15 years) and adult (n = 87, 18–30 years) listeners’ ability to recognize basic emotions and social expressions in the voices of both adult and youth actors. Adults’ emotional prosody was better recognized than that of youth, and adult listeners were more accurate overall than were mid-adolescents. Interaction effects revealed that youths’ accuracy was equivalent to adult listeners’ when hearing adult portrayals of anger, disgust, friendliness, happiness, and meanness, and youth portrayals of disgust, happiness, and meanness. Our findings highlight the importance of speaker characteristics and type of expression on listeners’ ability to recognize vocal cues of emotion and social intent.     

Complicating categories: Personae mediate racialized expectations of non‐native speech

This paper examines how American listeners’ expectations of non‐native English speech from speakers of East Asian descent can be modulated by the persona invoked by a speaker's visual display. While prior work has typically linked expectations of non‐native speaker status with East Asian‐ness broadly construed, this study indicates that US listeners’ expectations can be tied to more particular manifestations of this racialized identity, themselves informed by raciolinguistic ideologies. In a lexical recall task with persona‐based photographic primes, different visual styles embodied by the same Korean individual induced contrasting expectations of “foreign accented” speech, which corresponded to significant differences in how well the speech was remembered. Ultimately, I argue that models of sociolinguistic perception should include cognitive representations of social constructs like personae, not only to better capture the detailed nature of listeners’ sociolinguistic expectations, but also to avoid perpetuating homogenizing treatments of racialized groups’ language practices.     

Pragmatics-Language,Meaning & Communication——Take an example of conversational implicature and show how they might be derived,discussing any problems that arise

It is quite normal that in our daily communication,people sometimes do not produce utterances that containing their real meaning for various reasons,that is to say they implicate something by saying something else.Grandy and Warner(2006)suggest that people experience implicatures all of the time in their life and are seldom aware of it.Therefore,it is interesting to investigate the implicature of people’s utterances.People often tend to simply use‘implicature’to refer to the notion‘conversational implicature’for a shorthand,but actually they cannot be treated as the exactly same notion.Horn(2004)points out"Implicature is component of speaker meaning that constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being part of what is said"Horn’s notion of implicature is close to the notion that Grice calls conversational implicature.Grice(1975)classified implicature into conventional implicature and nonconventional implicature and treated the conversational implicature to a subclass of the nonconventional implicature,which means the implicature is not part of the conventional meaning of the sentence uttered but greatly depends on the particular conversational context.     

Women and Children First: Domestic Chaos and the Maternal Bond in the Drama of Liudmila Petrushevskaia

This article analyzes communication in the Ukrainian press from the perspective of gender linguistics, determining differences and similarities between females and males, exploring questions of genderlects in the language. The pragmatic Transactional Discourse Model is used to view divergence and approximation of the linguistic choices made by the two genders. It is argued that the language of the two genders is sensitive to situational use and the speaker’s perception of the addressee’s identity. The study evinces that women, when communicating with an imagined other, mark their language with a ‘female genderlect’ if the category of ‘closeness’ is prioritized. Linguistic output by males depends on the assessment of the gender of the addressee. The coding of both genders approximates when the ‘closeness’ factor is absent from a female speaker’s perception of the addressee and when the ‘gender’ variable does not come into play with a male speaker’s image of the addressee.     

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study

Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non-verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word-learning heuristics (e.g., mutual exclusivity). In a preregistered study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze. We used a gaze-following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668) to test a total of 93 6- to 9-month-old and 229 12- to 15-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants, in 11 laboratories located in 8 countries. Monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar gaze-following abilities, and both groups showed age-related improvements in speed, accuracy, frequency, and duration of fixations to congruent objects. Unexpectedly, bilinguals tended to make more frequent fixations to on-screen objects, whether or not they were cued by the actor. These results suggest that gaze sensitivity is a fundamental aspect of development that is robust to variation in language exposure.     

Making Sense of Multi‐Actor Dialogues in Family Therapy and Network Meetings

In recent years, a number of family therapists have conceptualized psychotherapy as a dialogical activity. This view presents family therapy researchers with specific challenges, the most important of which is to find ways of dealing with the dialogical qualities of the multi‐actor dialogues that occur, for example, in family therapeutic conversations. In this article, we propose some preliminary ideas concerning qualitative investigations of multi‐actor dialogues. Our aim is to work toward an integration of Bakhtin’s theoretical concepts with good practices in qualitative research (e.g., dialogical tools and concepts of a narrative processes coding system) in order to make sense of family therapy dialogues. A specific method that we have called Dialogical Methods for Investigations of Happening of Change is described. This method allows for a general categorization of the qualities of responsive dialogues in a single session, and also for a detailed focus on particular sequences through a microanalysis of specific topical episodes. The particular focus is on the voices present in the utterances, the positioning of each speaker, and the addressees of the utterances. The method is illustrated via an analysis of a couple therapy session with a depressed woman and her husband.     

Can Infants Use a Nonhuman Agent's Gaze Direction to Establish Word–Object Relations?

Adopting a procedure developed with human speakers, we examined infants' ability to follow a nonhuman agent's gaze direction and subsequently to use its gaze to learn new words. When a programmable robot acted as the speaker (Experiment 1), infants followed its gaze toward the word referent whether or not it coincided with their own focus of attention, but failed to learn a new word. When the speaker was human, infants correctly mapped the words (Experiment 2). Furthermore, when the robot interacted contingently, this did not facilitate infants' word mapping (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that gaze following upon hearing a novel word is not sufficient to learn the referent of the word when the speaker is nonhuman.     

Persona‐based information shapes linguistic perception: Valley Girls and California vowels

This paper investigates the effect of persona‐based information on implicit linguistic perceptions of a sociolinguistic feature – the backed trap vowel. trap ‐backing is associated both with macro‐social region (California) and with a particular persona that inhabits this region (the Valley Girl). An eye‐tracking paradigm is used to examine these associations in early, automatic stages of perception. One group of listeners was told the speaker was from California, while another group was told that the speaker had been described as a Valley Girl. Findings demonstrate that both the California information and the Valley Girl information caused listeners to expect the speaker to exhibit trap ‐backing. While previous studies have highlighted the influence of macro‐sociological categories on linguistic perception, the present study suggests that persona‐based social meanings can also serve to influence perception, supporting theories that foreground personae as social constructs crucial to interaction.     

He Said,She Said: Gender Differences in Mother – Adolescent Conversations about Sexuality

This study examined gender differences in self‐reported and observed conversations about sexual issues. Fifty mother –adolescent dyads reported on their conversations about sexual issues and participated in videotaped conversations about dating and sexuality in a laboratory setting. Gender differences (more mother – daughter than mother –son) were found in the extent of sexual communication based on adolescents’ reports, but no gender differences were found based on mothers’ reports, or on observations of conversations. Aspects of laboratory interactions, however, did distinguish mother– daughter and mother – son dyads, and related to self‐report measures. Girls’ reported sexuality communication frequency related to behavior in the laboratory setting. During mother – son conversations, one person usually took on the role of questioner, whereas the other did not. In contrast, there was evidence for mutuality of positive emotions for mother – daughter dyads, but not for mother – son dyads.     

What Types of Training Improve Learners’ Performances in Second Language Listening Comprehension?

This study investigates the impact of a high-level and a low-level process-based L2 comprehension training on L1 French students’ listening performances. These students (N = 108) of English, Spanish, and German came from five different classes. After a L2 comprehension pretest, the participants were divided into two experimental groups. During the experimental phase, the two groups listened to the same three documents in their respective L2. The first group undertook listening comprehension activities relying on low-level processes, while the second group undertook activities aiming at fostering their use of high-level processes. These second types of activities were based on the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) (Vandergrift, Goh, Mareschal & Tafaghodatari, 2006). As hypothesized, less skilled listeners trained to automatize low-level processes, scored significantly higher on the comprehension posttest than on the pretest. However, the hypothesis that more skilled listeners trained to develop high-level listening processes, would score better on the posttest than on the pretest could not be verified. Nevertheless, we observed some tendencies showing that more skilled learners had drawn some benefits from the training. In our conclusion, we argue that the impact of a high-level and a low-level process-based L2 comprehension training strongly depends on learners’ initial levels.     

Follow My Gaze: Face Race and Sex Influence Gaze‐Cued Attention in Infancy

Using the eye gaze of others to direct one's own attention develops during the first year of life and is thought to be an important skill for learning and social communication. However, it is currently unclear whether infants differentially attend to and encode objects cued by the eye gaze of individuals within familiar groups (e.g., own race, more familiar sex) relative to unfamiliar groups (e.g., other race, less familiar sex). During gaze cueing, but prior to the presentation of objects, 10‐month‐olds looked longer to the eyes of own‐race faces relative to 5‐month‐olds and relative to the eyes of other‐race faces. After gaze cueing, two objects were presented alongside the face and at both ages, infants looked longer to the uncued objects for faces from the more familiar‐sex and longer to cued objects for the less familiar‐sex faces. Finally, during the test phase, both 5‐ and 10‐month‐old infants looked longer to uncued objects relative to cued objects but only when the objects were cued by an own‐race and familiar‐sex individual. Results demonstrate that infants use face eye gaze differently when the cue comes from someone within a highly experienced group.     

Disentangling the Effects of an Adult Model's Eye Gaze and Head Orientation on Young Infants' Processing of a Previously Attended Object

In order to disentangle the effects of an adult model's eye gaze and head orientation on infants' processing of objects attended to by the adult, we presented 4‐month‐olds with faces that either (1) shifted eye gaze toward or away from an object while the head stayed stationary or (2) that turned their head while maintaining gaze directed straight ahead. Infants' responses to the previously attended and unattended objects were measured using eye‐tracking and event‐related potentials. In both conditions, infants responded to objects that were not cued by the adult's head or eye gaze shift with more visual attention and an increased negative central (Nc) component relative to cued objects. This suggests that cued objects had been encoded more effectively, whereas uncued objects required further processing. We conclude that eye gaze and head orientation act independently as cues to direct infants' attention and object processing. Both head orientation and eye gaze, when presented in motion, even override the effects of incongruent stationary information from the other kind of cue.     

Preference for Dynamic Human Images and Gaze‐Following Abilities in Preterm Infants at 6 and 12 Months of Age: An Eye‐Tracking Study

Preterm children are reported to be at higher risk of social communication problems such as autism spectrum disorder compared with full‐term infants. Although previous studies have suggested that preference for social stimuli in infancy is a possible indicator of later social communication development, little is known about this relation in preterm infants. We examined the gaze behavior of low‐risk preterm and full‐term infants at 6 and 12 months' corrected ages using two types of eye‐tracking tasks, which measured 1) preference for social stimuli by biological motion and human geometric preference and 2) ability to follow another's gaze direction. We found that preterm (compared with full‐term) infants at both 6 and 12 months of age spent less time looking toward dynamic human images, followed another's gaze less frequently, and looked for a shorter time at an object cued by another. Moreover, we found a positive correlation between looking time toward dynamic human images and frequency of gaze following at 12 months of age in full‐term, but not preterm, infants. We discuss the relation between the atypical patterns of gaze behavior in preterm infants and their higher risk of later social communication problems.     

Statistical word segmentation: Anchoring learning across contexts

The present experiments were designed to assess infants' abilities to use syllable co-occurrence regularities to segment fluent speech across contexts. Specifically, we investigated whether 9-month-old infants could use statistical regularities in one speech context to support speech segmentation in a second context. Contexts were defined by different word sets representing contextual differences that might occur across conversations or utterances. This mimics the integration of information across multiple interactions within a single language, which is critical for language acquisition. In particular, we performed two experiments to assess whether a statistically segmented word could be used to anchor segmentation in a second, more challenging context, namely speech with variable word lengths. The results of Experiment 1 were consistent with past work suggesting that statistical learning may be hindered by speech with word-length variability, which is inherent to infants' natural speech environments. In Experiment 2, we found that infants could use a previously statistically segmented word to support word segmentation in a novel, challenging context. We also present findings suggesting that this ability was associated with infants' early word knowledge but not their performance on a cognitive development assessment.     

Vocal Cues Underlying Youth and Adult Portrayals of Socio-emotional Expressions

Despite known differences in the acoustic properties of children’s and adults’ voices, no work to date has examined the vocal cues associated with emotional prosody in youth. The current study investigated whether child (n = 24, 17 female, aged 9–15) and adult (n = 30, 15 female, aged 18–63) actors differed in the vocal cues underlying their portrayals of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness) and social expressions (meanness, friendliness). We also compared the acoustic characteristics of meanness and friendliness to comparable basic emotions. The pattern of distinctions between expressions varied as a function of age for voice quality and mean pitch. Specifically, adults’ portrayals of the various expressions were more distinct in mean pitch than children’s, whereas children’s representations differed more in voice quality than adults’. Given the importance of pitch variables for the interpretation of a speaker’s intended emotion, expressions generated by adults may thus be easier for listeners to decode than those of children. Moreover, the vocal cues associated with the social expressions of meanness and friendliness were distinct from those of basic emotions like anger and happiness respectively. Overall, our findings highlight marked differences in the ways in which adults and children convey socio-emotional expressions vocally, and expand our understanding of the communication of paralanguage in social contexts. Implications for the literature on emotion recognition are discussed.     

Barriers and Prompts to Parent-Child Sexual Communication

One key resource for improving sexual health outcomes for young people is parent-child sexual communication, but researchers have yet to explore what prompts these conversations, and detailed research into the barriers of these conversations is lacking. This study aims to explicate what prompts these conversations and what prevents them from happening more often. A nationally representative, random sample of U.S. mothers and fathers was surveyed (N = 186). Participants reported that thinking their child is too young, regardless of the child’s age, was a major communication barrier, while communication self-efficacy and perceived value in sexual communication were associated with more communication. Sexual communication was often prompted by the child, or the parent deciding the child was “old enough,” and was rarely prompted by a family member or healthcare provider. Implications for improving parent-child sexual communication are discussed.     

Utilizing social media for social work: insights from clients in online youth services

ABSTRACT

This study explored and conceptualised service users’ experiences in online outreach projects supported by the Hong Kong SAR government. Fifteen active users were interviewed. The study used thematic analysis to explore service users’ experiences that might not have been possible without technology. Participant utterances were non-mutually-exclusively tagged with a specific theme. Each utterance reflected an aspect of user experience which combined a technical component with a service-need component. Six themes were identified, including: (i) Personalised newsfeeds help identify service information and news, (ii) Online status indicators improve service accessibility, (iii) Online communications enable a disinhibition effect, (iv) Asynchronous communications facilitate continual feedback loops, (v) Incomplete communicative modalities may cause misunderstanding and (vi) Asynchronous communication may disrupt conversations. The findings reveal that there are middle-level concepts between broad social work concepts and ever-changing technology. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Intergenerational interaction between old and young in creative task

By comparing intergenerational to same-generation interactions in creative activities, we aimed to reveal characteristic behaviors of older and younger adults in intergenerational interactions using a wooden block task. Four categories (“Proposal request”, “New proposal”, “Reactions to proposal”, “Assessments of partner’s behavior”) were extracted from conversations during task performance. In intergenerational groups, the ratio of utterances of “Proposal request” (encouraging a new proposal to partner) were higher than in same-generation groups for older adults. In intergenerational groups, older people assumed the role of encouraging younger people to suggest new ideas, and older people’s such empathic behaviors might provoke lively arguments.     

Windows to the Soul? Deliberate Eye Contact as a Cue to Deceit

Although people overwhelmingly believe that liars avoid eye contact, meta-analyses of deception literature have shown a non-significant relationship between gaze and deception. In the present experiment we measured eye movements in an innovative way. We coded the extent to which interviewees deliberately made eye contact with the interviewer. Liars take their credibility less for granted than truth tellers. They therefore may have a greater desire to be convincing and hence more inclined to monitor the interviewer to determine whether they seem to be being believed. We therefore hypothesized that liars would give more appearance of deliberately making eye contact than truth tellers (a relationship which opposes the stereotypical belief that liars look away). A total of 338 passengers at an international airport told the truth or lied about their forthcoming trip. As well as the deliberate eye contact variable, we coded the amount of time the interviewees looked away from the interviewer (e.g., gaze aversion), which is typically examined in deception research. Liars displayed more deliberate eye contact than truth tellers, whereas the amount of gaze aversion did not differ between truth tellers and liars.