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Public Speaking Tips & Speech Topics

41 Psychology Speech Topic Ideas

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

• Hierarchy of human needs theory of Abraham Maslow. The series of levels in that process are good main points: the physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation needs.
• Why do so many people find adolescence so difficult? Life circumstances perhaps make you feel like you are riding in a roller coaster due to the speedily physical and emotional changes. Mention the causes and the ways to cure. Psychology speech topics to help and advice other persons.
• How do you remember what you know? In other words describe the way your brain works for short-term and long-term memories. Molecular and chemical actions and reactions can be part of your informative conversation.
• Artificial Intelligence technologies. E.g. computer systems performing like humans (robotica), problem solving and knowledge management with reasoning based on past cases and data.
• Strong stimuli that cause changes in temporary behavior. E.g. Pills, money, food, sugar. In that case it is an good idea to speak about energy drinks and their short-term effectiveness – do not forget to mention the dangers …
• Jung’s theory about our ego, personal unconscious and collective unconscious. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung discovered that neurosis is based on tensions between our psyche and attitudes.
• What exactly is Emotional Intelligence? And why is it more important than IQ-ratings nowadays. How to measure EI with what personality tests?
• That brings me to the next psychology speech topics: the dangers of personality tests.
• Psychological persuasion techniques in speeches. E.g. body language, understanding audience’s motivations, trance and hypnosis.
• Marketing and selling techniques based on psychological effects. E.g. attractive stimulating colorful packaging, or influencing behavior of consumers while shopping in malls.
• Meditation helps to focus and calm down the mind. E.g. Teach your public to focus on breathing, revive each movement of an activity in slow motion, or the walking meditation.
• The reasons against and for becoming a behaviorist. Behaviorism is the methodological study of how the scientifically method of psychology.
• Sigmund Freud and his ideas. With a little bit of fantasy you can alter and convert these example themes into attractive psychology speech topics: our defense mechanisms, hypnosis and catharsis, psychosexual stages of development.
• Biological causes of a depression. E.g. biological and genetic, environmental, and emotional factors.
• When your boss is a woman. What happens to men? And to women?
• The first signs of anxiety disorders. E.g. sleeping and concentration problems, edgy and irritable feelings.
• How psychotherapy by trained professionals helps people to recover.
• How to improve your nonverbal communication skills and communicate effectively. Study someone’s incongruent body signs, vary your tone of voice, keep eye contact while talking informally of formally with a person.
• Always talk after traumatic events. Children, firefighter, police officers, medics in conflict zones.
• The number one phobia on earth is fear of public speaking – and not fear of dying. That I think is a very catchy psychological topic …

And a few more topics you can develop yourself:

• Dangers of personality tests.
• How to set and achieve unrealistic goals.
• Sigmund Freud Theory.
• The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory.
• Three ways to measure Emotional Intelligence.
• Why public speaking is the number one phobia on the planet.
• Animated violence does influence the attitude of young people.
• Becoming a millionaire will not make you happy.
• Being a pacifist is equal to being naive.
• Change doesn’t equal progress.
• Everyone is afraid to speak in public.
• Ideas have effect and consequence on lives.
• Mental attitude affects the healing process.
• Philanthropy is the fundament of curiosity.
• Praise in public and criticize or punish in private.
• Sometimes it is okay to lie.
• The importance of asking yourself why you stand for something.
• The only answer to cruelty is kindness.
• The trauma of shooting incidents last a lifetime.
• To grab people’s attention on stage, keep a close eye on their attitude and social backgrounds.
• Torture as an interrogation technique is never acceptable.

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Browse Course Material

Course info.

• Prof. John D. E. Gabrieli

Departments

• Brain and Cognitive Sciences

As Taught In

• Cognitive Science

Learning Resource Types

Introduction to psychology.

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Session Overview

Session activities.

Read the following before watching the lecture video.

• [ Sacks ] Chapter 9, “The President’s Speech” (pp. 80-86)
• Study outline for K&R Chapter 6 (PDF)
• [Stangor] Chapter 9, “Intelligence and Language”

Lecture Videos

View Full Video Lecture 12: Language View by Chapter Language Basics: Sounds We Hear and Distinguish From Sound to Meaning: Syntax, Semantics, and Comprehension Problems with Language: Aphasia and the Neural Basis of Speech Language Acquisition: Infants, Bilingualism, and the Case of Genie Video Resources Removed Clips Lecture Slides (PDF - 1.7MB)

Language is just incredible – think about how easy it is for us, as babies, to learn our native language effortlessly, and yet how hard it is, once we’ve already learned a language, to learn another… Read more »

Check Yourself

Short answer questions.

• Language is a system of communication and representation that is governed by systematic rules. The rules of can be studied at multiple levels. For each of the following terms, identify the features of language they describe:

› View/Hide Answers

• Syntax: The description of how words are organized into phrases and sentences. Often called the “grammar” of a language.
• Semantics: The description of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
• Phonology: The description of the sounds of a language and how they are put together to make words.
• Language is a powerful system because of the principle of discrete infinity, which means that a small number of basic units can be combined in an unlimited number of ways to represent and communicate ideas.
• What is the smallest unit of meaning in language called? Give an example of how these can be combined.
• What is the smallest contrastive unit of sound in language called? Give an example of one of these from English. Give an example of one of these from a foreign language you might have heard, but which is not present in English.
• Morpheme. For example: Un + believe + able = unbelievable
• Phoneme. For example: /k/ as in “cat” in English. In other languages but not English, e.g., the trilled “r” in Spanish, the clicks in Bantu, the trilled “r” in French, the hard “h” in Hebrew.
• It is remarkable that babies learn language so fast and so effectively, even though no one ever explicitly teaches them the rules of their language. Describe two facts you have learned about how babies learn language.

› Sample Answers

• Girls learn more words earlier than boys.
• Babies begin to lose the ability to discriminate foreign language speech sounds by 9-12 months.
• Children might use words wrong in overextensions (e.g. calling all animals “doggie”) or underextensions (refusing to call any other dog besides the family pet a “doggie”).

Further Study

These optional resources are provided for students that wish to explore this topic more fully.

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Language Acquisition Theory

Henna Lemetyinen

Postdoctoral Researcher

BSc (Hons), Psychology, PhD, Developmental Psychology

Henna Lemetyinen is a postdoctoral research associate at the Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH).

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Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Language is a cognition that truly makes us human. Whereas other species do communicate with an innate ability to produce a limited number of meaningful vocalizations (e.g., bonobos) or even with partially learned systems (e.g., bird songs), there is no other species known to date that can express infinite ideas (sentences) with a limited set of symbols (speech sounds and words).

This ability is remarkable in itself. What makes it even more remarkable is that researchers are finding evidence for mastery of this complex skill in increasingly younger children.

Infants as young as 12 months are reported to have sensitivity to the grammar needed to understand causative sentences (who did what to whom; e.g., the bunny pushed the frog (Rowland & Noble, 2010).

After more than 60 years of research into child language development, the mechanism that enables children to segment syllables and words out of the strings of sounds they hear and to acquire grammar to understand and produce language is still quite an enigma.

Behaviorist Theory of Language Acquisition

One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition was provided by Skinner (1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviorism , he accounted for language development using environmental influence, through imitation, reinforcement, and conditioning.

In this view, children learn words and grammar primarily by mimicking the speech they hear and receiving positive feedback for correct usage.

Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases.

For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the mother smiles and gives her some. As a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child’s language development (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011).

Over time, through repetition and reinforcement, they refine their linguistic abilities. Critics argue this theory doesn’t fully explain the rapid pace of language acquisition nor the creation of novel sentences.

Chomsky Theory of Language Development

However, Skinner’s account was soon heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world’s most famous linguist to date.

In the spirit of the cognitive revolution in the 1950s, Chomsky argued that children would never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone.

Noam Chomsky introduced the nativist theory of language development, emphasizing the role of innate structures and mechanisms in the human brain. Key points of Chomsky’s theory include:

Language Acquisition Device (LAD): Chomsky proposed that humans have an inborn biological capacity for language, often termed the LAD, which predisposes them to acquire language.

Universal Grammar: He suggested that all human languages share a deep structure rooted in a set of grammatical rules and categories. This “universal grammar” is understood intuitively by all humans.

Poverty of the Stimulus: Chomsky argued that the linguistic input received by young children is often insufficient (or “impoverished”) for them to learn the complexities of their native language solely through imitation or reinforcement. Yet, children rapidly and consistently master their native language, pointing to inherent cognitive structures.

Critical Period: Chomsky, along with other linguists, posited a critical period for language acquisition, during which the brain is particularly receptive to linguistic input, making language learning more efficient.

Critics of Chomsky’s theory argue that it’s too innatist and doesn’t give enough weight to social interaction and other factors in language acquisition.

Universal Grammar

Consequently, he proposed the theory of Universal Grammar: an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun category and a verb category, that facilitate the entire language development in children and overall language processing in adults.

Universal Grammar contains all the grammatical information needed to combine these categories, e.g., nouns and verbs, into phrases. The child’s task is just to learn the words of her language (Ambridge & Lieven).

For example, according to the Universal Grammar account, children instinctively know how to combine a noun (e.g., a boy) and a verb (to eat) into a meaningful, correct phrase (A boy eats).

This Chomskian (1965) approach to language acquisition has inspired hundreds of scholars to investigate the nature of these assumed grammatical categories, and the research is still ongoing.

Contemporary Research

A decade or two later, some psycho-linguists began to question the existence of Universal Grammar. They argued that categories like nouns and verbs are biologically, evolutionarily, and psychologically implausible and that the field called for an account that can explain the acquisition process without innate categories.

Researchers started to suggest that instead of having a language-specific mechanism for language processing, children might utilize general cognitive and learning principles.

Whereas researchers approaching the language acquisition problem from the perspective of Universal Grammar argue for early full productivity, i.e., early adult-like knowledge of the language, the opposing constructivist investigators argue for a more gradual developmental process. It is suggested that children are sensitive to patterns in language which enables the acquisition process.

An example of this gradual pattern learning is morphology acquisition. Morphemes are the smallest grammatical markers, or units, in language that alter words. In English, regular plurals are marked with an –s morpheme (e.g., dog+s).

Similarly, English third singular verb forms (she eat+s, a boy kick+s) are marked with the –s morpheme. Children are considered to acquire their first instances of third singular forms as entire phrasal chunks (Daddy kicks, a girl eats, a dog barks) without the ability to tease the finest grammatical components apart.

When the child hears a sufficient number of instances of a linguistic construction (i.e., the third singular verb form), she will detect patterns across the utterances she has heard. In this case, the repeated pattern is the –s marker in this particular verb form.

As a result of many repetitions and examples of the –s marker in different verbs, the child will acquire sophisticated knowledge that, in English, verbs must be marked with an –s morpheme in the third singular form (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011; Pine, Conti-Ramsden, Joseph, Lieven & Serratrice, 2008; Theakson & Lieven, 2005).

Approaching language acquisition from the perspective of general cognitive processing is an economic account of how children can learn their first language without an excessive biolinguistic mechanism.

However, finding a solid answer to the problem of language acquisition is far from being over. Our current understanding of the developmental process is still immature.

Investigators of Universal Grammar are still trying to convince that language is a task too demanding to acquire without specific innate equipment, whereas constructivist researchers are fiercely arguing for the importance of linguistic input.

The biggest questions, however, are yet unanswered. What is the exact process that transforms the child’s utterances into grammatically correct, adult-like speech? How much does the child need to be exposed to language to achieve the adult-like state?

What account can explain variation between languages and the language acquisition process in children acquiring very different languages to English? The mystery of language acquisition is granted to keep psychologists and linguists alike astonished decade after decade.

What is language acquisition?

Language acquisition refers to the process by which individuals learn and develop their native or second language.

It involves the acquisition of grammar, vocabulary, and communication skills through exposure, interaction, and cognitive development. This process typically occurs in childhood but can continue throughout life.

What is Skinner’s theory of language development?

Skinner’s theory of language development, also known as behaviorist theory, suggests that language is acquired through operant conditioning. According to Skinner, children learn language by imitating and being reinforced for correct responses.

He argued that language is a result of external stimuli and reinforcement, emphasizing the role of the environment in shaping linguistic behavior.

What is Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition?

Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition, known as Universal Grammar, posits that language is an innate capacity of humans.

According to Chomsky, children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), a biological ability that enables them to acquire language rules and structures effortlessly.

He argues that there are universal grammar principles that guide language development across cultures and languages, suggesting that language acquisition is driven by innate linguistic knowledge rather than solely by environmental factors.

Ambridge, B., & Lieven, E.V.M. (2011). Language Acquisition: Contrasting theoretical approaches . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax . MIT Press.

Pine, J.M., Conti-Ramsden, G., Joseph, K.L., Lieven, E.V.M., & Serratrice, L. (2008). Tense over time: testing the Agreement/Tense Omission Model as an account of the pattern of tense-marking provision in early child English. Journal of Child Language , 35(1): 55-75.

Rowland, C. F.; & Noble, C. L. (2010). The role of syntactic structure in children’s sentence comprehension: Evidence from the dative. Language Learning and Development , 7(1): 55-75.

Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal behavior . Acton, MA: Copley Publishing Group.

Theakston, A.L., & Lieven, E.V.M. (2005). The acquisition of auxiliaries BE and HAVE: an elicitation study. Journal of Child Language , 32(2): 587-616.

Further Reading

An excellent article by Steven Pinker on Language Acquisition

Pinker, S. (1995). The New Science of Language and Mind . Penguin.

Tomasello, M. (2005). Constructing A Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition . Harvard University Press.

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The Power of Words - Unveiling the Psychology of Speech for Effective Communication and Influence

Updated on 23rd May, 2023

The Fascinating Field of Psychology of Speech

The study of human communication and the intricate interplay between speech and psychology has given rise to a captivating field known as the psychology of speech. This multidisciplinary area of research delves into how speech influences our thoughts, behaviors, and interactions with others. By examining the psychological aspects of speech, we can unravel the complexities of language, communication, and cognition.

The psychology of speech encompasses a wide range of subfields, including speech perception, production, comprehension, and language development. Through rigorous scientific inquiry and investigation, researchers in this field aim to unravel the mysteries behind how we perceive, produce, and understand speech.

One of the fundamental aspects studied in the psychology of speech is speech perception. This involves understanding how we process and interpret speech sounds, tones, and linguistic cues. Researchers explore how our brains analyze phonetic information, recognize patterns, and extract meaning from the sounds and rhythms of speech.

Speech production is another crucial area of inquiry within the psychology of speech. It focuses on the cognitive and physiological processes involved in planning, coordinating, and executing speech movements. Understanding how our thoughts are transformed into spoken words sheds light on the complex motor skills and neural mechanisms that underlie our ability to communicate orally.

Comprehension is an essential component of speech psychology, investigating how we derive meaning from the words and sentences we hear. It explores the role of linguistic structures, context, and cognitive processes in understanding spoken language. By deciphering the intricate workings of comprehension, researchers strive to uncover the mechanisms that allow us to extract and interpret meaning from spoken communication.

Language development is a fascinating aspect of the psychology of speech, focusing on how children acquire language skills and how language evolves throughout our lifespan. Researchers examine the cognitive, social, and environmental factors that influence language acquisition, such as the role of caregiver interactions and exposure to linguistic stimuli.

The knowledge and insights gained from the psychology of speech have practical applications in various domains. Effective communication is crucial in fields such as education, healthcare, business, and interpersonal relationships. By understanding the psychological underpinnings of speech, professionals can enhance their communication skills, tailor their messages to different audiences, and foster stronger connections.

The Role of Psychology of Speech in Public Speaking

Public speaking is a skill that many individuals strive to master. It involves effectively delivering a message to an audience, capturing their attention, and persuading or informing them. The psychology of speech plays a crucial role in understanding the dynamics of public speaking and can provide valuable insights for speakers aiming to engage and connect with their audience.

The psychology of speech sheds light on various aspects that contribute to effective public speaking. One key area of focus is nonverbal communication. Researchers explore how body language, facial expressions, gestures, and vocal tone impact the audience's perception and engagement. Understanding how to align verbal and nonverbal cues can enhance a speaker's ability to convey their message persuasively.

Speech psychology also emphasizes the importance of vocal delivery. The tone, pitch, volume, and pace of speech significantly influence the audience's perception of a speaker's credibility, confidence, and overall message. By understanding the psychology of speech, speakers can learn to modulate their voice, use pauses strategically, and emphasize key points effectively.

Moreover, the psychology of speech highlights the significance of audience analysis and adaptation. Speakers must consider the demographics, preferences, and needs of their audience to tailor their content and delivery style accordingly. Adapting to the audience's communication style, language, and cultural background can foster rapport and engagement.

Another crucial aspect explored in the psychology of speech is the management of anxiety and nervousness. Public speaking often elicits anxiety, which can impact a speaker's delivery and confidence. Understanding the psychological factors underlying these feelings can help speakers employ strategies to manage anxiety effectively, such as deep breathing exercises, positive self-talk, and visualization techniques.

Additionally, the psychology of speech recognizes the power of storytelling in public speaking. By integrating storytelling techniques, speakers can tap into the emotional and narrative elements that resonate with the audience. Understanding the cognitive processes and emotional responses triggered by storytelling can make a speech more memorable and impactful.

The Influence of Psychology of Speech in Effective Communication Skills

Effective communication skills are vital in various aspects of life, including personal relationships, professional settings, and social interactions. The psychology of speech offers valuable insights into understanding and enhancing communication skills, enabling individuals to convey their messages clearly, connect with others, and build meaningful relationships.

Speech psychology emphasizes the role of active listening in effective communication. By understanding how people interpret and process verbal and nonverbal cues, individuals can become more attentive listeners. Active listening involves focusing on the speaker, providing verbal and nonverbal feedback, and demonstrating empathy. Developing active listening skills enhances mutual understanding and strengthens communication bonds.

The psychology of speech also explores the power of effective questioning in communication. Asking relevant and open-ended questions can encourage dialogue, promote deeper understanding, and elicit valuable insights. By mastering the art of asking insightful questions, individuals can foster meaningful conversations and demonstrate genuine interest in others.

Nonverbal communication is another essential aspect studied in the psychology of speech. Body language, facial expressions, eye contact, and gestures can convey emotions, attitudes, and intentions. By becoming aware of these nonverbal cues, individuals can align their verbal and nonverbal communication to enhance clarity and avoid potential misinterpretations.

Understanding the psychology of speech also sheds light on the impact of emotional intelligence in effective communication. Emotional intelligence involves recognizing and managing one's own emotions while empathizing with the emotions of others. By developing emotional intelligence, individuals can navigate conflicts, respond appropriately to others' emotions, and cultivate healthier and more productive communication dynamics.

The psychology of speech also acknowledges the role of assertiveness in effective communication. Being assertive means expressing thoughts, needs, and boundaries in a respectful and confident manner. By developing assertiveness skills, individuals can communicate their perspectives effectively, establish clear boundaries, and engage in constructive problem-solving.

Moreover, speech psychology highlights the importance of adapting communication styles to different contexts and individuals. By understanding the psychology of speech in relation to diverse cultural backgrounds, personality traits, and communication preferences, individuals can adjust their communication approach to foster understanding and establish stronger connections.

The Psychology of Speech in Interpersonal Relationships

Interpersonal relationships play a vital role in our lives, shaping our well-being, happiness, and overall satisfaction. The psychology of speech offers valuable insights into how communication patterns, language use, and speech behaviors influence the dynamics and quality of interpersonal relationships.

One crucial aspect explored in the psychology of speech is the role of effective communication in building and maintaining healthy relationships. Clear and open communication fosters trust, understanding, and emotional connection between individuals. By understanding the principles of effective communication, such as active listening, assertiveness, and empathy, individuals can establish stronger and more fulfilling relationships.

The psychology of speech also delves into the impact of communication styles on relationship dynamics. Different communication styles, such as passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive, can significantly influence how individuals interact and respond to one another. By recognizing and adapting communication styles, individuals can promote positive communication patterns and resolve conflicts constructively.

Language use and speech behaviors are additional areas of focus in the psychology of speech in interpersonal relationships. The choice of words, tone of voice, and nonverbal cues can affect how messages are received and interpreted by others. Developing awareness of these factors enables individuals to express themselves more effectively and avoid misunderstandings or miscommunications.

Speech psychology also explores the influence of emotional expression and validation in interpersonal relationships. The ability to express and validate emotions promotes a sense of closeness, understanding, and emotional support. Understanding the psychological impact of emotional expression can enhance emotional connection and strengthen relationships.

Conflict resolution is another crucial aspect studied in the psychology of speech. Effective conflict resolution techniques, such as active listening, perspective-taking, and constructive problem-solving, contribute to healthier and more resilient relationships. By understanding the psychological underpinnings of conflict and applying effective communication strategies, individuals can navigate disagreements and maintain positive relationship dynamics.

Additionally, the psychology of speech acknowledges the significance of nonverbal communication in interpersonal relationships. Body language, facial expressions, touch, and eye contact can convey trust, affection, and intimacy. Developing awareness of nonverbal cues can enhance the overall quality of interpersonal relationships.

The Psychology of Speech in Persuasive Communication

Persuasive communication is a skill that plays a significant role in various domains, including marketing, advertising, politics, and everyday interactions. The psychology of speech provides valuable insights into the principles and techniques that contribute to effective persuasive communication, enabling individuals to influence attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making.

One essential aspect explored in the psychology of speech is the art of framing. Framing involves presenting information in a way that influences how it is perceived and interpreted. By understanding the cognitive biases and heuristics that individuals rely on when processing information, persuasive communicators can strategically frame their messages to increase their persuasive impact.

Speech psychology also emphasizes the power of storytelling in persuasive communication. Stories tap into emotions, engage the audience, and make information more relatable and memorable. By incorporating compelling narratives into their messages, persuasive communicators can capture attention, evoke empathy, and ultimately influence beliefs and behaviors.

The psychology of speech also explores the role of credibility and social proof in persuasive communication. People are more likely to be persuaded by individuals they perceive as credible and by evidence that demonstrates consensus among others. By establishing credibility, providing expert opinions, and leveraging social proof, persuasive communicators can enhance their persuasive impact.

Understanding the psychology of speech also sheds light on the importance of audience analysis in persuasive communication. Persuasive messages need to be tailored to the values, needs, and beliefs of the target audience. By conducting thorough audience research and segmentation, communicators can customize their messages to resonate with specific groups and increase their persuasive influence.

The psychology of speech also acknowledges the role of emotion in persuasive communication. Emotions can evoke strong responses and motivate individuals to take action. Persuasive communicators strategically evoke emotions, such as fear, joy, or empathy, to influence attitudes and behaviors. By understanding the emotional triggers of the target audience, communicators can effectively appeal to their emotions and enhance persuasive outcomes.

Additionally, the psychology of speech recognizes the impact of language and rhetoric in persuasive communication. The choice of words, persuasive techniques, and rhetorical devices can significantly influence how messages are received and interpreted. By mastering rhetorical strategies, such as repetition, rhetorical questions, and appeals to logic or emotions, communicators can increase the persuasive power of their messages.

The Psychology of Speech in Effective Leadership Communication

Effective leadership communication is essential for inspiring and guiding teams, fostering collaboration, and achieving organizational goals. The psychology of speech provides valuable insights into the principles and strategies that contribute to effective leadership communication, enabling leaders to influence, motivate, and engage their followers.

One key aspect explored in the psychology of speech is the importance of clarity and conciseness in leadership communication. Leaders must convey their messages in a clear and straightforward manner to ensure understanding and minimize misinterpretation. By using concise language, avoiding jargon, and providing specific instructions, leaders can enhance their communication effectiveness.

Speech psychology also emphasizes the significance of active listening in effective leadership communication. Listening attentively to team members fosters trust, promotes open dialogue, and demonstrates respect. By practicing active listening, leaders can gain valuable insights, address concerns, and make team members feel heard and valued.

The psychology of speech also recognizes the importance of nonverbal communication in leadership communication. Leaders' body language, facial expressions, and gestures can influence how their messages are received and interpreted. By being aware of their nonverbal cues, leaders can align their verbal and nonverbal communication to enhance credibility, engagement, and connection with their team.

Understanding the psychology of speech also sheds light on the power of inspirational and motivational communication in leadership. Leaders who can inspire and motivate their team members create a sense of purpose, commitment, and enthusiasm. By using persuasive techniques, storytelling, and appeals to shared values, leaders can ignite passion and drive performance.

The psychology of speech also explores the impact of emotional intelligence in leadership communication. Leaders who can understand and manage their own emotions while empathizing with others create an atmosphere of trust and psychological safety. By demonstrating empathy, emotional awareness, and effective emotional expression, leaders can foster positive relationships and enhance team dynamics.

Furthermore, the psychology of speech recognizes the significance of adaptability in leadership communication. Leaders must adapt their communication style and approach based on the needs, preferences, and cultural backgrounds of their team members. By being flexible and accommodating, leaders can establish rapport, build stronger connections, and promote a positive and inclusive work environment.

The Psychology of Speech in Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Public speaking and presentation skills are essential in various professional and personal settings, ranging from business presentations to educational seminars and social events. The psychology of speech provides valuable insights into the principles and techniques that contribute to effective public speaking and presentation skills, enabling individuals to engage, inform, and persuade their audience.

One crucial aspect explored in the psychology of speech is the significance of audience analysis in public speaking and presentations. Understanding the demographics, knowledge levels, and interests of the audience allows speakers to tailor their message to meet the audience's needs and capture their attention. By conducting thorough audience research and adapting their content and delivery style accordingly, speakers can enhance their impact.

Speech psychology also emphasizes the power of storytelling in public speaking and presentations. Stories have the ability to captivate audiences, evoke emotions, and make information more memorable. By incorporating relevant and engaging narratives into their speeches and presentations, speakers can create a deeper connection with their audience and increase their overall impact.

The psychology of speech also recognizes the importance of vocal delivery in public speaking. Tone, pitch, volume, and pace of speech can significantly influence how the audience perceives and engages with the message. By varying vocal delivery, using appropriate pauses, and emphasizing key points, speakers can effectively convey their ideas and maintain the audience's interest throughout the presentation.

Furthermore, the psychology of speech recognizes the importance of visual aids in supporting public speaking and presentations. Effective use of visual aids, such as slides, charts, and videos, can enhance audience understanding and retention of information. By using visually appealing and relevant visuals, speakers can reinforce their key points and engage the audience visually.

The psychology of speech also acknowledges the role of confidence and self-belief in public speaking. Confidence is contagious and can positively impact audience engagement and perception of the speaker. By practicing and preparing thoroughly, managing nervousness, and projecting self-assurance, speakers can deliver their message with conviction and authority.

The psychology of speech is a fascinating field that provides valuable insights into the intricacies of communication and its impact on various aspects of our lives. From understanding the psychology of speech in interpersonal relationships to persuasive communication, effective leadership, and public speaking, this discipline sheds light on the principles, strategies, and techniques that contribute to successful communication outcomes.

In the realm of interpersonal relationships, the psychology of speech reveals how effective communication, communication styles, language use, emotional expression, conflict resolution, and nonverbal communication influence relationship dynamics. By applying these principles, individuals can cultivate healthier, more satisfying relationships, fostering trust, understanding, and emotional connection.

When it comes to persuasive communication, the psychology of speech unravels the art of framing, storytelling, credibility, social proof, audience analysis, emotion, and rhetoric. By understanding these factors, communicators can tailor their messages to influence attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making, ultimately achieving their persuasive goals.

In the context of effective leadership, the psychology of speech highlights the importance of clarity, active listening, nonverbal communication, inspirational and motivational communication, emotional intelligence, and adaptability. Leaders who embody these qualities can effectively communicate, inspire, and engage their followers, driving organizational success.

Regarding public speaking and presentation skills, the psychology of speech emphasizes the significance of audience analysis, storytelling, vocal delivery, nonverbal communication, visual aids, and confidence. By mastering these elements, speakers can captivate audiences, convey their message with clarity, and leave a lasting impact.

In all these areas, the psychology of speech reveals that effective communication is not simply about the words spoken but also encompasses understanding the psychological nuances, considering the needs and preferences of the audience, and utilizing various techniques to engage, influence, and connect with others.

By studying the psychology of speech and applying its principles, individuals can enhance their communication skills, build stronger relationships, persuade effectively, lead with influence, and deliver impactful presentations. These insights enable us to navigate the complexities of human interaction, connect on a deeper level, and achieve our communication objectives.

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26 Speech Perception

Sven L. Mattys, Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK

• Published: 03 June 2013
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Speech perception is conventionally defined as the perceptual and cognitive processes leading to the discrimination, identification, and interpretation of speech sounds. However, to gain a broader understanding of the concept, such processes must be investigated relative to their interaction with long-term knowledge—lexical information in particular. This chapter starts with a review of some of the fundamental characteristics of the speech signal and by an evaluation of the constraints that these characteristics impose on modeling speech perception. Long-standing questions are then discussed in the context of classic and more recent theories. Recurrent themes include the following: (1) the involvement of articulatory knowledge in speech perception, (2) the existence of a speech-specific mode of auditory processing, (3) the multimodal nature of speech perception, (4) the relative contribution of bottom-up and top-down flows of information to sound categorization, (5) the impact of the auditory environment on speech perception in infancy, and (6) the flexibility of the speech system in the face of novel or atypical input.

The complexity, variability, and fine temporal properties of the acoustic signal of speech have puzzled psycholinguists and speech engineers for decades. How can a signal seemingly devoid of regularity be decoded and recognized almost instantly, without any formal training, and despite being often experienced in suboptimal conditions? Without any real effort, we identify over a dozen speech sounds (phonemes) per second, recognize the words they constitute, almost immediately understand the message generated by the sentences they form, and often elaborate appropriate verbal and nonverbal responses before the utterance ends.

Unlike theories of letter perception and written-word recognition, theories of speech perception and spoken-word recognition have devoted a great deal of their investigation to a description of the signal itself, most of it carried out within the field of phonetics. In particular, the fact that speech is conveyed in the auditory modality has dramatic implications for the perceptual and cognitive operations underpinning its recognition. Research in speech perception has focused on the constraining effects of three main properties of the auditory signal: sequentiality, variability, and continuity.

Nature of the Speech Signal

Sequentiality.

One of the most obvious disadvantages of the auditory system compared to its visual counterpart is that the distribution of the auditory information is time bound, transient, and solely under the speaker’s control. Moreover, the auditory signal conveys its acoustic content in a relatively serial fashion, one bit of information at a time. The extreme spreading of information over time in the speech domain has important consequences for the mechanisms involved in perceiving and interpreting the input.

Illustration of the sequential nature of speech processing. ( A ) Waveform of a complete sentence, that is, air pressure changes (Y axis) over time (X axis). ( B–D ) Illustration of a listener’s progressive processing of the sentence at three successive points in time. The visible waveform represents the portion of signal that is available for processing at time t1 ( B ), t2 ( C ), and t3 ( D ).

In particular, given that relatively little information is conveyed per unit of time, the extraction of meaning can only be done within a window of time that far exceeds the amount of information that can be held in echoic memory (Huggins, 1975 ; Nooteboom, 1979 ). Likewise, given that there are no such things as “auditory saccades,” in which listeners would be able to skip ahead of the signal or replay the words or sentences they just heard, speech perception and lexical-sentential integration must take place sequentially, in real time (Fig. 26.1 ).

For a large part, listeners are extremely good at keeping up with the rapid flow of speech sounds. Marslen-Wilson ( 1987 ) showed that many words in sentences are often recognized well before their offset, sometimes as early as 200 ms after their onset, the average duration of one or two syllables. Other words, however, can only be disentangled from competitors later on, especially when they are short and phonetically reduced, for example, “you are” pronounced as “you’re” (Bard, Shillcock, & Altmann, 1988 ). Yet, in general, there is a consensus that speech perception and lexical access closely shadow the unfolding of the signal (e.g., the Cohort Model; Marslen-Wilson, 1987 ), even though “right-to-left” effects can sometimes be observed as well (Dahan, 2010 ).

Given the inevitable sequentiality of speech perception and the limited amount of information that humans can hold in their auditory short-term memory, an obvious question is whether fast speech, which allows more information to be packed into the same amount of time, helps listeners handle the transient nature of speech and, specifically, whether it affects the mechanisms leading to speech recognition. A problem, however, is that fast speech tends to be less clearly articulated (hypoarticulated), and hence, less intelligible. Thus, any processing gain due to denser information packing might be offset by diminished intelligibility. However, this confound can be avoided experimentally. Indeed, speech rate can be accelerated with minimal loss of intrinsic intelligibility via computer-assisted signal compression (e.g., Foulke & Sticht, 1969 ; van Buuren, Festen, & Houtgast, 1999 ). Time compression experiments have led to mixed results. Dupoux and Mehler ( 1990 ), for instance, found no effect of speech rate on how phonemes are perceived in monosyllabic versus disyllabic words. They started from the observation that the initial consonant of a monosyllabic word is detected faster if the word is high frequency than if it is low frequency, whereas frequency has no effect in multisyllabic words. This difference can be attributed to the use of a lexical route with short words and of a phonemic route with longer words. That is, short words are mapped directly onto lexical representations, whereas longer words undergo a process of decomposition into phonemes first. Critically, Dupoux and Mehler reported that a frequency effect did not appear when the duration of the disyllabic words was compressed to that of the monosyllabic words, suggesting that whether listeners use a lexical or phonemic route to identify phonemes depends on structural factors (number of phonemes or syllables) rather than time. Thus, on this account, the transient nature of speech has only a limited effect on the mechanisms underlying speech recognition.

In contrast, others have found significant effects of speech rate on lexical access. For example, both Pitt and Samuel ( 1995 ) and Radeau, Morais, Mousty, and Bertelson ( 2000 ) observed that the uniqueness point of a word, that is, the sequential point at which it can be uniquely specified (e.g., “spag” for “spaghetti”), could be dramatically altered when speech rate was manipulated. However, most changes were observed at slower rates, not at faster rates. Thus, changes in speech rate can have effects on recognition mechanisms, but these are observed mainly with time expansion, not with time compression. In sum, although the studies by Dupoux and Mehler ( 1990 ), Pitt and Samuel ( 1995 ), and Radeau et al. ( 2000 ) highlight different effects of time manipulation on speech processing, they all agree that packing more information per unit of time by accelerating speech rate does not compensate for the transient nature of the speech signal and for memory limitations. This is probably due to intrinsic perceptual and mnemonic limitations on how fast information can be processed by the speech system—at any rate.

In general, the sequential nature of speech processing is a feature that many models have struggled to implement not only because it requires taking into account echoic and short-term memory mechanisms (Mattys, 1997 ) but also because the sequentiality problem is compounded by a lack of clear boundaries between phonemes and between words, as described later.

The inspection of a speech waveform does not reveal clear acoustic correlates of what the human ear perceives as phoneme and word boundaries. The lack of boundaries is due to coarticulation between phonemes (the blending of articulatory gestures between adjacent phonemes) within and across words. Even though the degree of coarticulation between phonemes is somewhat less pronounced across than within words (Fougeron & Keating, 1997 ), the lack of clear and reliable gaps between words, along with the sequential nature of speech delivery, makes speech continuity one of the most challenging obstacles for both psycholinguistic theory and automatic speech recognition applications. Yet the absence of phoneme and word boundary markers hardly seems to pose a problem for everyday listening, as the subjective experience of speech is not one of continuity but, rather, of discreteness—that is, a string of sounds making up a string of words.

A great deal of the segmentation problem can be solved, at least in theory, based on lexical knowledge and contextual information. Key notions, here, are lexical competition and segmentation by lexical subtraction. In this view, lexical candidates are activated in multiple locations in the speech signal—that is, multiple alignment—and they compete for a segmentation solution that does not leave any fragments lexically unaccounted for (e.g., “great wall” is favored over “gray twall,” because “twall” in not an English word). Importantly, this knowledge-driven approach does not assign a specific computational status to segmentation, other than being the mere consequence of mechanisms associated with lexical competition (e.g., McClelland & Elman, 1986 ; Norris, 1994 ).

Another source of information for word segmentation draws upon broad prosodic and segmental regularities in the signal, which listeners use as heuristics for locating word boundaries. For example, languages whose words have a predominant rhythmic pattern (e.g., word-initial stress is predominant in English; word-final lengthening is predominant in French) provide a relatively straightforward—though probabilistic—segmentation strategy to their listeners (Cutler, 1994 ). The heuristic for English would go as follows: every time a strong syllable is encountered, a boundary is posited before that syllable . For French, it would be: every time a lengthened syllable is encountered, a boundary is posited after that syllable . Another documented heuristic is based on phonotactic probability, that is, the likelihood that specific phonemes follow each other in the words of a language (McQueen, 1998 ). Specifically, phonemes that are rarely found next to each other in words (e.g., very few English words contain the /fh/ diphone) would be probabilistically interpreted as having occurred across a word boundary (e.g., “tou gh h ero”). Finally, a wide array of acoustic-phonetic cues can also give away the position of a word boundary (Umeda & Coker, 1974 ). Indeed, phonemes tend to be realized differently depending on their position relative to a word or a syllable boundary. For example, in English, word-initial vowels are frequently glottalized (brief closure of the glottis, e.g., /e/ in “isle e nd,” compared to no closure in “I l e nd”), word-initial stop consonants are often aspirated (burst of air accompanying the release of a consonant, e.g., /t/ in “gray t anker” compared to no aspiration in “grea t anchor”).

It is important to note that, in everyday speech, lexically and sublexically driven segmentation cues usually coincide and reinforce each other. However, in suboptimal listening conditions (e.g., noise) or in rare cases where a conflict arises between those two sources of information, listeners have been shown to downplay sublexical discrepancies and give more heed to lexical plausibility (Mattys, White, & Melhorn, 2005 ; Fig. 26.2 ).

Variability

Perhaps the most defining challenge for the field of speech perception is the enormous variability of

Sketch of Mattys, White, and Melhorn’s ( 2005 ) hierarchical approach to speech segmentation. The relative weights of speech segmentation cues are illustrated by the width of the gray triangle. In optimal listening conditions, the cues in Tier I dominate. When lexical access is compromised or ambiguous, the cues in Tier II take over. Cues from Tier III are recruited when both lexical and segmental cues are compromised (e.g., background of severe noise). (Reprinted from Mattys, S. L., White, L., & Melhorn, J. F [2005]. Integration of multiple speech segmentation cues: A hierarchical framework. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 134 , 477–500 [Figure 7], by permission of the American Psychological Association.)

the signal relative to the stored representations onto which it must be matched. Variability can be found at the word level, where there are infinite ways a given word can be pronounced depending on accents, voice quality, speech rate, and so on, leading to a multitude of surface realizations for a unique target representation. But this many-to-one mapping problem is not different from the one encountered with written words in different handwritings or object recognition in general. In those cases, signal normalization can be effectively achieved by defining a set of core features unique to each word or object stored in memory and by reducing the mapping process to those features only.

The real issue with speech variability happens at a lower level, namely, phoneme categorization. Unlike letters whose realizations have at least some commonality from one instance to another, phonemes can vary widely in their acoustic manifestation—even within the same speaker. For example, as shown in Figure 26.3A , the realization of the phoneme /d/ has no immediately apparent acoustic commonality in /di/ and /du/ (Delattre, Liberman, & Cooper, 1955 ). This lack of acoustic invariance is the consequence of coarticulation: The articulation of /d/ in /di/ is partly determined by the articulatory preparation for /i/, and likewise for /d/ in /du/. The power of coarticulation is easily demonstrated by observing a speaker’s mouth prior to saying /di/ compared to /du/. The mode of articulation of /i/ (unrounded) versus /u/ (rounded) is visible on the speaker’s lips even before /d/ has been uttered. The resulting acoustics of /d/ preceding each vowel have therefore little in common.

The success of the search for acoustic cues, or invariants, capable of uniquely identifying phonemes or phonetic categories has been highly feature specific. For example, as illustrated in Figure 26.3A , the place of articulation of phonemes (i.e., the place in the vocal tract where the airstream is most constricted, which distinguishes, e.g., /b/, /d/, /g/) has been difficult to map onto specific acoustic cues. However, the difference between voiced and unvoiced stop consonants (/b/, /d/, /g/ vs. /p/, /t/, /k/) can be traced back fairly reliably to the duration between the release of the consonant and the moment when the vocal folds start vibrating, that is, the voice onset time (VOT; Liberman, Delattre, & Cooper, 1958 ). In English, the VOT of voiced stop consonants is typically around 0 ms (or at least shorter than 20 ms), whereas it is generally over 25 ms for voiceless consonants. Although this contrast has been shown to be somewhat influenced by consonant type and vocalic context (e.g., Lisker & Abramson, 1970 ), VOT is a fairly robust cue for the voiced-voiceless distinction.

( A ) Stylized spectrograms of /di/ and /du/. The dark bars, or formants, represent areas of peak energy on the frequency scale (Y axis), which correlate with zones of high resonance in the vocal tract. The curvy leads into the formants are formant transitions. They show coarticulation between the consonant and the following vowel. Note the dissimilarity between the second formant transitions in /di/ (rising) and /du/ (falling). However, as shown in ( B ), the extrapolation back in time of the two second formants’ transitions point to a common frequency locus.

Vowels are subject to coarticulatory influences, too, but the spectral structure of their middle portion is usually relatively stable, and hence, a taxonomy of vowels based on their unique distribution of energy bands along the frequency spectrum, or formants, can be attempted. However, such distribution is influenced by speaking rate, with fast speech typically leading to the target frequency of the formants being missed or leading to an asymmetric shortening of stressed versus unstressed vowels (Lindblom, 1963 ; Port, 1977 ). In general, speech rate variation is particularly problematic for acoustic cues involving time. Even stable cues such as VOT can lose their discriminability power when speech rate is altered. For example, at fast speech rates, the VOT difference between voiced and voiceless stop consonants decreases, making the two types of phonemes more difficult to distinguish (Summerfield, 1981 ). The same problem has been noted for the difference between /b/ and /w/, with /b/ having rapid formant transitions into the vowel and /w/ less rapid ones. This difference is less pronounced at fast speech rates (Miller & Liberman, 1979 ).

Yet, except for those conditions in which subtle differences are manipulated in the laboratory, listeners are surprisingly good at compensating for the acoustic distortions introduced by coarticulation and changes in speech rate. Thus, input variability, phonetic-context effects, and the lack of invariance do not appear to pose a serious problem for everyday speech perception. As reviewed later, however, theoretical accounts aiming to reconcile the complexity of the signal with the effortlessness of perception vary greatly.

Basic Phenomena and Questions in Speech Perception

Following are some of the observations that have shaped theoretical thinking in speech perception over the past 60 years. Most of them concern, in one way or another, the extent to which speech perception is carried out by a part of the auditory system dedicated to speech and involving speech-specific mechanisms not recruited for nonspeech sounds.

Categorical Perception

Categorical perception in a sensory phenomenon whereby a physically continuous dimension is perceived as discrete categories, with abrupt perceptual boundaries between categories and poor discrimination within categories (e.g., perception of the visible electromagnetic radiation spectrum as discrete colors). Early on, categorical perception was found to apply to phonemes—or at least some of them. For example, Liberman, Harris, Hoffman, and Griffith ( 1957 ) showed that synthesized syllables ranging from /ba/ to /da/ to /ga/ by gradually adjusting the transition between the consonant and the vowel’s formants (i.e., the formant transitions) were perceived as falling into coarse /b/, /d/, and /g/ categories, with poor discrimination between syllables belonging to a perceptual category and high discrimination between syllables straddling a perceptual boundary (Fig. 26.4 ). Importantly, categorical perception was not observed for matched auditory stimuli devoid of phonemic significance (Liberman, Harris, Eimas, Lisker, & Bastian, 1961 ). Moreover, since categorical perception meant that easy-to-identify syllables (spectrum endpoints) were also easy syllables to pronounce, whereas less-easy-to-identify syllables (spectrum midpoints) were generally less easy to pronounce, categorical perception was seen as a highly adaptive property of the speech system, and hence, evidence for a dedicated speech mode of the auditory system. This claim was later weakened by reports of categorical perception for nonspeech sounds (e.g., Miller, Wier, Pastore, Kelly, & Dooling, 1976 ) and for speech sounds by nonhuman species (e.g., Kluender, Diehl, & Killeen, 1987 ; Kuhl, 1981 ).

Idealized identification pattern (solid line, left Y axis) and discrimination pattern (dashed line, right Y axis) for categorical perception. Illustration with a /ba/ to /da/ continuum. Identification shows a sharp perceptual boundary between categories. Discrimination is finer around the boundary than inside the categories.

Effects of Phonetic Context

The effect of adjacent phonemes on the acoustic realization of a target phoneme (e.g., /d/ in /di/ vs. /du/) was mentioned earlier as a core element of the variability challenge. This challenge, that is, achieving perceptual constancy despite input variability, is perhaps most directly illustrated by the converse phenomenon, namely, the varying perception of a constant acoustic input as a function of its changing phonetic environment. Mann ( 1980 ) showed that the perception of a /da/-/ga/ continumm was shifted in the direction of reporting more /ga/ when it was preceded by /al/ and more /da/ when it was preceded by /ar/. Since these shifts are in the opposite direction of coarticulation between adjacent phonemes, listeners appear to compensate for the expected consequences of coarticulation. Whether compensation for coarticulation is evidence for a highly sophisticated mechanism whereby listeners use their implicit knowledge of how phonemes are produced—that is, coarticulated—to guide perception (e.g., Fowler, 2006 ) or simply a consequence of long-term association between the signal and the percept (e.g., Diehl, Lotto, & Holt, 2004 ; Lotto & Holt, 2006 ) has been a question of fundamental importance for theories of speech perception, as discussed later.

Integration of Acoustic and Optic Cues

The chief outcome of speech production is the emission of an acoustic signal. However, visual correlates, such as facial and lip movements, are often available to the listener as well. The effect of visual information on speech perception has been extensively studied, especially in the context of the benefit provided by visual cues for listeners with hearing impairments (e.g., Lachs, Pisoni, & Kirk, 2001 ) and for speech perception in noise (e.g., Sumby & Pollack, 1954 ). Visual-based enhancement is also observed for undegraded speech with a semantically complicated content or for foreign-accented speech (Reisberg, McLean, & Goldfield, 1987 ). In the laboratory, audiovisual integration is strikingly illustrated by the well-known McGurk effect. McGurk and McDonald ( 1976 ) showed that listeners presented with an acoustic /ba/ dubbed over a face saying /ga/ tended to report hearing /da/, a syllable whose place of articulation is intermediate between /ba/ and /ga/. The robustness and automaticity of the effect suggest that the acoustic and (visual) articulatory cues of speech are integrated at an early stage of processing. Whether early integration indicates that the primitives of speech perception are articulatory in nature or whether it simply highlights a learned association between acoustic and optic information has been a theoretically divisive debate (see Rosenblum, 2005 , for a review).

Lexical and Sentential Effects on Speech Perception

Although traditional approaches to speech perception often stop where word recognition begins (in the same way that approaches to word recognition often stop where sentence comprehension begins), speech perception has been profoundly influenced by the debate on how higher order knowledge affects the identification and categorization of phonemes and phonetic features. A key observation is that lexical knowledge and sentential context can aid phoneme identification, especially when the signal is ambiguous or degraded. For example, Warren and Obusek ( 1971 ) showed that a word can be heard as intact even when a component phoneme is missing and replaced with noise, for example, “legi*lature,” where the asterisk denotes the replaced phoneme. In this case, lexical knowledge dictates what the listener should have heard rather than what was actually there, a phenomenon referred to as phoneme restoration. Likewise, Warren and Warren ( 1970 ) showed that a word whose initial phoneme is degraded, for example, “*eel,” tends to be heard as “wheel” in “It was found that the *eel was on the axle” and as “peel” in “It was found that the *eel was on the orange.” Thus, phoneme identification can be strongly influenced by lexical and sentential knowledge even when the disambiguating context appears later than the degraded phoneme.

But is this truly of interest for speech perception ? In other words, could phoneme restoration (and other similar speech illusions) simply result from postperceptual, strategic biases? In this case, “*eel” would be interpreted as “wheel” simply because it makes pragmatic sense to do so in a particular sentential context, not because our perceptual system is genuinely tricked by high-level expectations. If so, contextual effects are of interest to speech-perception scientists only insofar as they suggest that speech perception happens in a system that is unpenetrable by higher order knowledge—an unfortunately convenient way of indirectly perpetuating the confinement of speech perception to the study of phoneme identification. The evidence for a postperceptual explanation is mixed. While Norris, McQueen, and Cutler ( 2000 ), Massaro ( 1989 ), and Oden and Massaro ( 1978 ), among others, found no evidence for online top-down feedback to the perceptual system and no logical reasons why such feedback should exist, Samuel ( 1981 , 1997 , 2001 ), Connine and Clifton ( 1987 ), and Magnuson, McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin ( 2003 ), among others, have reported lexical effects on perception that challenge feedforward models—for example, evidence that lexical information truly alters low-level perceptual discrimination (Samuel, 1981 ). This debate has fostered extreme empirical ingenuity over the past decades but comparatively little change to theory. One exception, however, is that the debate has now spread to the long-term effects of higher order knowledge on speech perception. For example, while Norris, McQueen, and Cutler ( 2000 ) argue against online top-down feedback, the same group (2003) recognizes that perceptual (re-)tuning can happen over time, in the context of repeated exposure and learning. Placing the feedforward/feedback debate in the time domain provides an opportunity to examine the speech system at the interface with cognition, and memory functions in particular. It also allows more applied considerations to be introduced, such as the role of perceptual recalibration for second-language learning and speech perception in difficult listening conditions (Samuel & Kraljic, 2009 ), as discussed later.

Theories of Speech Perception (Narrowly and Broadly Construed)

Motor and articulatory-gesture theories.

The Motor Theory of speech perception, reported in a series of articles in the early 1950s by Liberman, Delattre, Cooper, and other researchers from the Haskins Laboratories, was the first to offer a conceptual solution to the lack-of-invariance problem. As mentioned earlier, the main stumbling block for speech-perception theories was the observation that many phonemes cannot uniquely be identified by a set of stable and reliable acoustic cues. For example, the formant transitions of /d/, especially the second formant, differ as a function of the following vowel. However, Delattre et al. ( 1955 ) found commonality between different /d/s by extrapolating the formant transitions back in time to their convergence point, or locus (or hub ; Potter, Kopp, & Green, 1947 ), as shown in Figure 26.3B . Thus, what is common to the formants of all /d/s is the frequency at their origin, that is, the frequency that would best reflect the position of the articulators prior to the release of the consonant. This led to one of the key arguments in support of the motor theory, namely that a one-to-one relationship between acoustics and phonemes can be established if the speech system includes a mechanism that allows the listener to work backward through the rules of production in order to identify the speaker’s intended phonemes. In other words, the lack-of-invariance problem can be solved if it can be demonstrated that listeners perceive speech by identifying the speaker’s intended speech gestures rather than (or in addition to) relying solely on the acoustic manifestation of such gestures. The McGurk effect, whereby auditory perception is dramatically altered by seeing the speaker’s moving lips (articulatory gestures), was an important contributor to the view that the perceptual primitives of speech are gestural in nature.

In addition to claiming that the motor system is recruited for perceiving speech (and partly because of this claim), the Motor Theory also posits that speech perception takes place in a highly specialized and speech-specific module that is neurally isolated and is most likely a unique and innate human endowment (Liberman, 1996 ; Liberman & Mattingly, 1985 ). However, even among supporters of a motor basis for speech perception, agreeing upon an operational definition of intended speech gestures and providing empirical evidence for the contribution of such intended gestures to perception proved difficult. This led Fowler and her colleagues to propose that the objects of speech perception are not intended articulatory gestures but real gestures, that is, actual vocal tract movements that are inferable from the acoustic signal itself (e.g., Fowler, 1986 , 1996 ). Thus, although Fowler’s Direct Realism approach aligns with the Motor Theory in that it claims that perceiving speech is perceiving gestures, it asserts that the acoustic signal itself is rich enough in articulatory information to provide a stable (i.e., invariant) signal-to-phoneme mapping algorithm. In doing so, Direct Realism can do away with claims about specialized and/or innate structures for speech perception.

Although the popularity of the original tenets of the Motor Theory—and, to some extent, associated gesture theories—has waned over the years, the theory has brought forward essential questions about the specificity of speech, the specialization of speech perception, and, more recently, the neuroanatomical substrate of a possible motor component of the speech apparatus (e.g., Gow & Segawa, 2009 ; Pulvermüller et al., 2006 ; Sussman, 1989 ; Whalen et al., 2006 ), a topic that regained interest following the discovery of mirror neurons in the premotor cortex (e.g., Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004 ; but see Lotto, Hickok, & Holt, 2009 ). The debate has also shifted to a discussion of the extent to which the involvement of articulation during speech perception might in fact be under the listener’s control and its manifestation partly task specific (Yuen, Davis, Brysbaert, & Rastle, 2010 , Fig. 26.5 ; see comments by McGettigan, Agnew, & Scott, 2010 ; Rastle, Davis, & Brysbaert, 2010 ). The Motor Theory has also been extensively reviewed—and revisited—in an attempt to address problems highlighted by auditory-based models, as described later (e.g., Fowler, 2006 , 2008 ; Galantucci, Fowler, & Turvey, 2006 ; Lotto & Holt, 2006 ; Massaro & Chen, 2008 ).

Electropalatographic data showing the proportion of tongue contact on alveolar electrodes during the initial and final portions of /k/-initial (e.g., kib ) or /s/-initial (e.g., s ib ) syllables (collapsed) while a congruent or incongruent distractor is presented (Yuen et al., 2010 ). The distractor was presented auditorily in conditions A and B and visually in condition C. With the target kib as an example, the congruent distractor in the A condition was kib and the incongruent distractor started with a phoneme involving a different place of articulation (e.g., tib ). In condition B, the incongruent distractor started with a phoneme that differed from the target only by its voicing status, not by its place of articulation (e.g., gib ). Condition C was the same as condition A, except that the distractor was presented visually. The results show “traces” of the incongruent distractors in target production when the distractor is in articulatory competition with the target, particularly in the early portion of the phoneme (condition A), but not when it involves the same place of articulation (condition B), or when it is presented visually (condition C). The results suggest a close relationship between speech perception and speech production. (Reprinted from Yuen, I., Davis, M. H., Brysbaert, M., Rastle, K. [2010]. Activation of articulatory information in speech perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA , 107 , 592–597 [Figure 2], by permission of the National Academy of Sciences.)

Auditory Theory(ies)

The role of articulatory gestures in perceiving speech and the special status of the speech-perception system progressively came under attack largely because of insufficient hard evidence and lack of computational parsimony. Recall that recourse to articulatory gestures was originally posited as a way to solve the lack-of-invariance problem and turn a many(acoustic traces)-to-one(phoneme) mapping problem into a one(gesture)-to-one(phoneme) mapping solution. However, the lack of invariance problem turned out to be less prevalent and, at the same time, more complicated than originally claimed. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, many phonemes were found to preserve distinctive features across contexts (e.g., Blumstein & Stevens, 1981 ; Stevens & Blumstein, 1981 ). At the same time, lack of invariance was found in domains for which a gestural explanation was only of limited use, for example, voice quality, loudness, and speech rate.

Perhaps most problematic for gesture-based accounts was the finding by Kluender, Diehl, and Killeen ( 1987 ) that phonemic categorization, which was viewed by such accounts as necessitating access to gestural primitives, could be observed in species lacking the anatomical prerequisites for articulatory knowledge and practice (Japanese quail; Fig. 26.6 ). This result was seen by many as undermining both the motor component of speech perception and its human-specific nature. Parsimony became the new driving force. As Kluender et al. put it, “A theory of human phonetic categorization may need to be no more (and no less) complex than that required to explain the behavior of these quail” (p. 1197). The gestural explanation for compensation for coarticulation effects (Mann, 1980 ) was challenged by a general auditory mechanism as well. In Mann’s experiment, the perceptual shift on the /da/-/ga/ continumm induced by the preceding /al/ versus /ar/ context was explained by reference to articulatory gestures. However, Lotto and Kluender ( 1998 ) found a similar shift when the preceding context consisted of nonspeech sounds mimicking the spectral characteristics of the actual syllables (e.g., tone glides). Thus, the acoustic composition of the context, and in particular its spectral contrast with the following syllable, rather than an underlying reference to abstract articulatory gestures, was able to account for Mann’s context effect (but see Fowler, Brown, & Mann’s, 2000 , subsequent multimodal challenge to the auditory account).

However, auditory theories have been criticized for lacking in theoretical content. Auditory accounts are indeed largely based on counterarguments (and counterevidence) to the motor and gestural theories, rather than resting on a clear set of falsifiable principles (Diehl et al., 2004 ). While it is clear that a great deal of phenomena previously believed to require a gestural account can be explained within an arguably simpler auditory framework, it remains to be seen whether auditory theories can provide a satisfactory explanation for the entire class of phenomena in which the many-to-one puzzle has been observed (e.g., Pardo & Remez, 2006 ).

Pecking rates at test for positive stimuli (/dVs/) and negative stimuli (all others) for one of the quail in Kluender et al.’s ( 1987 ) study in eight vowel contexts. The test session was preceded by a learning phase in which the quail learned to discriminate /dVs/ syllables (i.e., syllables starting with /d/ and ending with /s/, with a varying intervocalic vowel) from /bVs/ and /gVs/ syllables, with four different intervocalic vowels not used in the test phase. During learning, the quail was rewarded for pecking in response to /d/-initial syllables (positive trials) but not to /b/- and /g/-initial syllables (negative trials). The figure shows that, at test, the quail pecked substantially more to positive than negative syllables, even though these syllables contained entirely new vowels, that is, vowels leading to different formant transitions with the initial consonant than those experienced during the learning phase. (Reprinted from Kluender, K. R., Diehl, R. L., & Killeen, P. R. [1987]. Japanese Quail can form phonetic categories. Science , 237 , 1195–1197 [Figure 1], by permission of the National Academy of Sciences.)

Top-Down Theories

This rubric and the following one (bottom-up theories) review theories of speech perception broadly construed . They are broadly construed in that they consider phonemic categorization, the scope of the narrowly construed theories, in the context of its interface with lexical knowledge. Although the traditional separation between narrowly and broadly construed theories originates from the respective historical goals of speech perception and spoken-word recognition research (Pisoni & Luce, 1987 ), an understanding of speech perception cannot be complete without an analysis of the impact of long-term knowledge on early sensory processes (see useful reviews in Goldinger, Pisoni, & Luce, 1996 ; Jusczyk & Luce, 2002 ).

The hallmark of top-down approaches to speech perception is that phonetic analysis and categorization can be influenced by knowledge stored in long-term memory, lexical knowledge in particular. As mentioned earlier, phoneme restoration studies (e.g., Warren & Obusek, 1971 ; Warren & Warren, 1970 ) showed that word knowledge could affect listeners’ interpretation of what they heard, but they did not provide direct evidence that phonetic categorization per se (i.e., perception , as it was referred to in that literature) was modified by lexical expectations. However, Samuel ( 1981 ) demonstrated that auditory acuity was indeed altered when lexical information was available (e.g., “pr*gress” [from “progress”], with * indicating the portion on which auditory acuity was measured) compared to when it was not (e.g., “cr*gress” [from the nonword “crogress”]).

This kind of result (see also, e.g., Ganong, 1980 ; Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1980 ; and, more recently, Gow, Segawa, Ahlfors, & Lin, 2008 ) led to conceptualizing the speech system as being deeply interactive, with information flowing not only from bottom to top but also from top down. For example, the TRACE model (more specifically, TRACE II; McClelland & Elman, 1986 ) is an interactive-activation model made of a large number of units organized into three levels: features, phonemes, and words (Fig. 26.7 A). The model includes bottom-up excitatory connections (from features to phonemes and from phonemes to words), inhibitory lateral connections (within each level), and, critically, top-down excitatory connections (from words to phonemes and from phonemes to features). Thus, the activation levels of features, for example, voicing, nasality, and burst, are partly determined by the activation levels of phonemes, and these are partly determined by the activation levels of words. In essence, this architecture places speech perception within a system that allows a given sensory input to yield a different perceptual experience (as opposed to interpretive experience) when it occurs in a word versus a nonword or next to phoneme x versus phoneme y, and so on. TRACE has been shown to simulate a large range of perceptual and psycholinguistic phenomena, for example, categorical perception, cue trading relations, phonetic context effects, compensation for coarticulation, lexical effects on phoneme detection/categorization, segmentation of embedded words, and so on. All this takes place within an architecture that is neither domain nor species specific. Later instantiations of TRACE have been proposed by McClelland ( 1991 ) and Movellan and McClelland ( 2001 ), but all of them preserve the core interactive architecture described in the original model.

Like TRACE, Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART; e.g., Grossberg, 1986 ; Grossberg & Myers, 1999 ) suggests that perception emerges from a compromise, or stable state, between sensory information and stored lexical knowledge (Fig. 26.7B ). ART includes items (akin to subphonemic features or feature clusters) and list chunks (combinations of items whose composition is the result of prior learning; e.g., phonemes, syllables, or words). In ART, a sensory input activates items that, in turn, activate list chunks. List chunks feed back to component items, and items back to list chunks again in a bottom-up/top-down cyclic manner that extends over time, ultimately creating stable resonance between a set of items and a list chunk. Both TRACE and ART posit that connections between levels are only excitatory and connections within levels are only inhibitory. In ART, in typical circumstances, attention is directed to large chunks (e.g., words), and hence the content of smaller chunks is generally less readily available. Small mismatches between large chunks and small chunks do not prevent resonance, but large mismatches do. In other words, unlike TRACE, ART does not allow the speech system to “hallucinate” information that is not already there (however, for circumstances in which it could, see Grossberg, 2000a ). Large mismatches lead to the establishment of new chunks, and these gain resonance via subsequent exposure. In doing so, ART provides a solution to the stability-plasticity dilemma, that is, the unwanted erasure of prior learning by more recent learning (Grossberg, 1987 ), also referred to as catastrophic interference (e.g., McCloskey & Cohen, 1989 ).

Thus, like TRACE, ART posits that speech perception results from an online interaction between prelexical and lexical processes. However, ART is more deeply grounded in, and motivated by biologically plausible neural dynamics, where reciprocal connectivity and resonance states have been observed (e.g., Felleman & Van Essen, 1991 ). Likewise, ART replaces the hierarchical structure of TRACE with a more flexible one, in which tiers self-organize over time through competitive dynamics—as opposed to being predefined. Although sometimes accused of placing too few constraints on empirical expectations (Norris et al., 2000 ), the functional architecture of ART is thought to be more computationally economical than that of TRACE and more amenable to modeling both real-time and long-term temporal aspects of speech processing (Grossberg, Boardman, & Cohen, 1997 ).

Bottom-Up Theories

Bottom-up theories describe effects of lexical and sentential knowledge on phoneme categorization as a consequence of postperceptual biases. In this conceptualization, reporting “progress” when presented with “pr*gress” simply reflects a strategic decision to do so and the functionality of a system that is geared toward meaningful communication—we generally hear words rather than nonwords. Here, phonetic analysis itself is incorruptible by lexical or sentential knowledge. It takes place within an autonomous module that receives no feedback from lexical and postlexical layers. In Cutler and Norris’s ( 1979 ) Race model, phoneme identification is the result of a time race between a sublexical route and a lexical route activated in parallel in an entirely bottom-up fashion (Fig. 26.7C ). In normal circumstances, the lexical route is faster, which means that a sensory input that has a match in the lexicon (e.g., “progress”) is usually read out from that route. A nonlexical sensory input (e.g., “crogress”) is read out from the prelexical route. In this model, “pr*gress” is reported as containing the phoneme /o/ because the lexical route receives enough evidence to activate the word “progress” and, being faster, this route determines the response. In contrast, “cr*gress” does not lead to an acceptable match in the lexicon, and hence, readout is performed from the sublexical route, with the degraded phoneme being faithfully reported as degraded.

Simplified architecture of ( A ) TRACE, ( B ) ART, ( C ) Race, ( D ) FLMP, and ( E ) Merge. Layers are labeled consistently across models for comparability. Excitatory connections are denoted by arrows. Inhibitory connections are denoted by closed black circles.

Massaro’s Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception (FLMP; Massaro, 1987 , 1996 ; Oden & Massaro, 1978 ) also exhibits a bottom-up architecture, in which various sources of sensory input—for example, auditory, visual—contribute to speech perception without any feedback from the lexical level (Fig. 26.7D ). In FLMP, acoustic-phonetic features are activated multimodally and each feature accumulates a certain level of activation (on a continuous 0-to-1 scale), reflecting the degree of certainty that the feature has appeared in the signal. The profile of features’ activation levels is then compared against a prototypical profile of activation for phonemes stored in memory. Phoneme identification occurs when the match between the actual and prototypical profiles reaches a level determined by goodness-of-fit algorithms. Critically, the match does not need to be perfect to lead to identification; thus, there is no need for lexical top-down feedback. Prelexical and lexical sources of information are then integrated into a conscious percept. Although the extent to which the integration stage can be considered a true instantiation of bottom-up processes is a matter for debate (Massaro, 1996 ), FLMP also predicts that auditory acuity of * is fundamentally comparable in “pr*gress” and “cr*gress”—like the Race model and unlike top-down theories.

From an architectural point of view, integration between sublexical and lexical information is handled differently by Norris et al.’s ( 2000 ) Merge model. In Merge, the phoneme layer is duplicated into an input layer and a decision layer (Fig. 26.7E ). The phoneme input layer feeds forward to the lexical layer (with no top-down connections) and the phoneme decision layer receives input from both the phoneme input layer and the lexical layer. The phoneme decision layer is the place where phonemic and lexical inputs are integrated and where standard lexical phenomena arise (e.g., Ganong, 1980 ; Samuel, 1981 ). While both FLMP and Merge produce a decision by integrating unaltered lexical and sublexical information, the input received from the lexical level differs in the two models. In FLMP, lexical activation is relatively independent from the degree of activation of its component phonemes, whereas, in Merge, lexical activation is directly influenced by the pattern of activation sent upward by the phoneme input layer. While Merge has been criticized for exhibiting a contorted architecture (Gow, 2000 ; Samuel, 2000 ), being ecologically improbable (e.g., Grossberg, 2000b ; Montant, 2000 ; Stevens, 2000 ), and being simply a late instantiation of FLMP (Massaro, 2000 ; Oden, 2000 ), it has gathered the attention of both speech-perception and spoken-word-recognition scientists around a question that is as yet unanswered.

Bayesian Theories

Despite important differences in functional architecture between top-down and bottom-up models, both classes of models agree that speech perception involves distinct levels of representations (e.g., features, phonemes, words), multiple lexical activation, lexical competition, integration (of some sort) between actual sensory input and lexical expectations, and corrective mechanisms (of some sort) to handle incompleteness or uncertainty in the input. A radically different class of models based on optimal Bayesian inference has recently emerged as an alternative to the ones mentioned earlier—recently in psycholinguistics at least. These models eschew the concept of lexical activation altogether, sometimes doing away with the bottom-up/top-down debate itself—or at a minimum blurring the boundaries between the two mechanisms. For instance, in their Shortlist B model, Norris and McQueen ( 2008 ) have replaced activation with the concepts of likelihood and probability, which are seen as better approximations of actual (i.e., imperfect) human performance in the face of actual (i.e., complex and variable) speech input. The appeal of Bayesian computations is substantial because output (or posterior) probabilities, for example, probability that a word will be recognized, are estimated by tabulating both confirmatory and disconfirmatory evidence accumulated over past instances, as opposed to being tied to fixed activation thresholds (Fig. 26.8 ). In particular, Shortlist B has replaced discrete input categories such as features and phonemes with phoneme likelihoods calculated from actual speech data. Because they are derived from real speech, the phoneme likelihoods vary from instance to instance and as a function of the quality of the input and the phonetic context. Thus, while noisier, these probabilities are a better reflection of the type of challenge faced by the speech system in everyday conditions. They also allow the model to provide a single account for speech phenomena that usually require distinct ad-hoc mechanisms in other models. A general criticism leveled against Bayesian models, however, concerns the legitimacy of their priors , that is, the set of assumptions used to determine initial probabilities before any evidence has been gathered (e.g., how expected is a word or a phoneme a priori). Because priors can be difficult to establish, their arbitrariness or the modeler’s own biases can have substantial effects on the model’s outcome. Likewise, compared to the models reviewed earlier, models based on Bayesian inference often lead to less straightforward hypotheses, which makes their testability somewhat limited—even though their performance level in terms of replicating known patterns of data is usually high.

Main Bayesian equation in Shortlist B (Norris & McQueen, 2008 ). P(word i |evidence) is the conditional probability of a specific word ( word i ) having been heard given the available (intact or degraded) input ( evidence ). P(word i ) represents the listener’s prior belief, before any perceptual evidence has been accumulated, that word i will be present in the input. P(word i ) can be approximated from lexical frequencies and contextual variables. The critical term of the equation is P(evidence|word i ) , which is the likelihood of the evidence given word i , that is, the product of the probabilities of the sublexical units (e.g., phonemes) making up word i . This term is important because it acknowledges and takes into account the variability of the input (noise, ambiguity, idiosyncratic realization, etc.) in the input-to-representation mapping process. The probability of word i so calculated is then compared to that of all other words in the lexicon ( n ). Thus, Bayesian inference provides an index of word recognition that considers both lexical and sublexical factors as well as the complexity of a real and variable input.

Tailoring Speech Perception: Learning and Relearning

The literature reviewed so far suggests that perceiving speech involves a set of highly sophisticated processing skills and structures. To what extent are these skills and structures in place at birth? Of particular interest in the context of early theories of speech perception is the way in which speech perception and speech production develop relative to each other and the degree to which perceptual capacities responsible for subtle phonetic discrimination (e.g., voicing distinction) are present in prelinguistic infants. Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk, and Vigorito ( 1971 ) showed that 1-month-old infants perceive a voicing-based /ba/-/pa/ continuum categorically, just as adults do. Similarly, like adults (Mattingly, Liberman, Syrdal, & Halwes, 1971 ), young infants show a dissociation between categorical perception with speech and continuous perception with matched nonspeech (Eimas, 1974 ). Infants also seem to start off with an open-ended perceptual system, allowing them to discriminate a wide range of subtle phonetic contrasts—far more contrasts than they will be able to discriminate in adulthood (e.g., Aslin, Werker, & Morgan, 2002 ; Trehub, 1976 ). There is therefore strong evidence that fine speech-perception skills are in place early in life—at least well before the onset of speech production—and operational with minimal, if any, exposure to ambient speech. These findings have led to the idea that speech-specific mechanisms are part of the human biological endowment and have been taken as evidence for the innateness of language, or at least some of its perceptual aspects (Eimas et al., 1971 ). In that sense, an infant has very little to learn about speech perception. If anything, attuning to one’s native language is rather a matter of losing sensitivity to (or unlearning ) phonetic contrasts that have little communicative value for that particular language, for example, the /r/-/l/ distinction for Japanese listeners.

However, the idea that infants are born with a universal discrimination device operating according to a use-it-or-lose-it principle has not been unchallenged. For instance, on closer examination, discrimination capacities at the end of the first year appear far less acute and far less universal than expected (e.g., Lacerda & Sundberg, 2001 ). Likewise, discrimination of irrelevant contrasts does not wane as systematically and as fully as the theory would have it (e.g., Polka, Colantonio, & Sundara, 2001 ). For example, Bowers, Mattys, and Gage ( 2009 ) showed that language-specific phonemes learned in early childhood but never heard or produced subsequently, as would be the case for young children of temporarily expatriate parents, can be relearned relatively easily even decades later (Fig. 26.9A ). Thus, discriminatory attrition is not as widespread and severe as previously believed, suggesting that the representations of phonemes from “forgotten” languages, that is, those we stop practicing early in life, may be more deeply engraved in our long-term memory than we think.

By and large, however, the literature on early speech perception indicates that infants possess fine language-oriented auditory skills from birth as well as impressive capacities to learn from the ambient auditory scene during the first year of life (Fig. 26.10 ). Auditory deprivation during that period (e.g., otitis media; delay prior to cochlear implantation) can have severe consequences on speech perception and later language development (e.g., Clarkson, Eimas, & Marean, 1989 ; Mody, Schwartz, Gravel, & Ruben, 1999 ), possibly due to a general decrease of attention to sounds (e.g., Houston, Pisoni, Kirk, Ying, & Miyamoto, 2003 ). However, even in such circumstances, partial sensory information is often available through the visual channel (facial and lip information), which might explain the relative resilience of basic speech perception skills to auditory deprivation. Indeed, Kuhl and Meltzoff ( 1982 ) showed that, as early as 4 months of age, infants show a preference for matched audiovisual inputs (e.g., audio /a/ with visual /a/) over mismatched inputs (e.g., audio /a/ with visual /i/). Even more striking, infants around that age seem to integrate discrepant audiovisual information following the typical McGurk pattern observed in adults (Rosenblum, Schmuckler, & Johnson, 1997 ). These results suggest that the multimodal (or amodal) nature of speech perception, a central tenet of Massaro’s Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception (FLMP; cf. Massaro, 1987 ), is present early in life and operates without much prior experience with sound-gesture association. Although the strength of the McGurk effect is lower in infants than adults (e.g., Massaro, Thompson, Barron, & Laren, 1986 ; McGurk & MacDonald, 1976 ), early cross-modal integration is often taken as evidence for gestural theories of speech perception and as a challenge to auditory theories.

A question of growing interest concerns the flexibility of the speech-perception system when it is faced with an unstable or changing input. Can the perceptual categories learned during early infancy be undone or retuned to reflect a new environment? The issue of perceptual (re)learning is central to research on second-language (L2) perception and speech perception in degraded conditions. Evidence for a speech-perception-sensitive period during the first year of life (Trehub, 1976 ) suggests that attuning to new perceptual categories later on should be difficult and perhaps not as complete as it is for categories learned earlier. Late learning of L2 phonetic contrasts (e.g., /r/-/l/ distinction for Japanese L1 speakers) has indeed been shown to be slow, effortful, and imperfect (e.g., Logan, Lively, & Pisoni, 1991 ). However, even in those conditions, learning appears to transfer to tokens produced by new talkers (Logan et al., 1991 ) and, to some degree, to production (Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997 ). Successful learning of L2 contrasts is not systematically observed, however. For example, Bowers et al. ( 2009 ) found no evidence that English L1 speakers could learn to discriminate Zulu contrasts (e.g., /b/-//) or Hindi contrasts (e.g., /t/ vs. /˛/) even after 30 days of daily training (Fig. 26.9 B ). Thus, although possible, perceptual learning of L2 contrasts is greatly constrained by the age of L2 exposure, the nature and duration of training, and the phonetic overlap between the L1 and L2 phonetic inventories (e.g., Best, 1994 ; Kuhl, 2000 ).

Perceptual learning of accented L1 and noncanonical speech follows the same general patterns as L2 learning, but it usually leads to faster and more complete retuning (e.g., Bradlow & Bent, 2008 ; Clarke & Garrett, 2004 ). A reason for this difference is that, while L2 contrast learning involves the formation of new perceptual categories, whose boundaries are sometimes in direct conflict with L1 categories, accented L1 learning “simply” involves retuning existing perceptual categories, often by broadening their mapping range. This latter feature makes perceptual learning of accented speech a special instance of the more general debate on the episodic versus abstract nature of phonemic and lexical representations. At issue, here, is whether phonemic and lexical representations consist of a collection of episodic instances in which surface details are preserved (voice, accent, speech rate) or, alternatively, single, abstract representations (i.e., one for each phoneme and one for each word). That at least some surface details of words are preserved in long-term memory is undeniable (e.g., Goldinger, 1998 ). The current debate focuses on (1) whether lexical representations include both indexical (e.g., voice quality) and allophonic (e.g., phonological variants) details (Luce, McLennan, & Charles-Luce, 2003 ); (2) whether such details are of a lexical nature (i.e., stored within the lexicon), rather than sublexical (i.e., stored at the subphonemic, phonemic, or syllabic level; McQueen, Cutler, & Norris, 2006 ); (3) the online time course of episodic trace activation (e.g., Luce et al., 2003 ; McLennan, Luce, & Charles-Luce, 2005 ); (4) the mechanisms responsible for consolidating newly learned instances or new perceptual categories (e.g., Fenn, Nusbaum, & Margoliash, 2003 ); and (5) the possible generalization to other types of noncanonical speech, such as disordered speech (e.g., Lee, Whitehall, & Coccia, 2009 ; Mattys & Liss, 2008 ).

( A ) AX discrimination scores over 30 consecutive days (50% chance level; feedback provided) for Zulu contrasts (e.g., /b/-//) and Hindi contrasts (e.g., /t/ vs. /˛/) by DM, a 20-year-old, male, native English speaker who was exposed to Zulu from 4 to 8 years of age but never heard Zulu subsequently. Note DM’s improvement with the Zulu contrasts over the 30 days, in sharp contrast with his inability to learn the Hindi contrasts. ( B ) Performance on the same task by native English speakers with no prior exposure to Zulu or Hindi. (Adapted with permission from Bowers, J. S., Mattys, S. L., & Gage, S. H., [2009]. Preserved implicit knowledge of a forgotten childhood language. Psychological Science , 20 , 1064–1069 [partial Figure 1].)

Summary of key developmental landmarks for speech perception and speech production in the first year of life. (Reprinted from Kuhl, P. K. [2004]. Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 5 , 831–843 [Figure 1], by permission of the Nature Publishing Group.)

According to Samuel and Kraljic ( 2009 ), the aforementioned literature should be distinguished from a more recent strand of research that focuses on the specific variables affecting perceptual learning and the mechanisms linking such variables to perception. In particular, Norris, McQueen, and Cutler ( 2003 ) found that lexical information is a powerful source of perceptual recalibration. For example, Dutch listeners repeatedly exposed to a word containing a sound halfway between two existing phonemes (e.g., witlo* , where * is ambiguous between /f/ and /s/, with witlof a Dutch word—chicorey—and witlos a nonword) subsequently perceived a /f/-/s/ continuum as biased in the direction of the lexically induced percept (more /f/ than /s/ in the witlo* case). Likewise, Bertelson, Vroomen, and de Gelder ( 2003 ) found that repeated exposure to McGurk audiovisual stimuli (e.g., audio /a*a/ and visual /aba/ leading to the auditory perception of / aba/) biased the subsequent perception of an audio-only /aba/-/ada/ continuum in the direction of the visually induced percept. Although visually induced perceptual learning seems to be less long-lasting than its lexically induced counterpart (Vroomen, van Linden, Keetels, de Gelder, & Bertelson, 2004 ), the Norris et al. and Bertelson et al. studies demonstrate that even the mature perceptual system can show a certain degree of flexibility when it is faced with a changing auditory environment.

Comparison of speech recognition error rate by machines (ASR) and humans. The logarithmic scale on the Y axis shows that ASR performance is approximately one order of magnitude behind human performance across various speech materials (ASR error rate for telephone conversation: 43%). The data were collated by Lippmann ( 1997 ). (Reprinted from Moore, R. K. [ 2007 ]. Spoken language processing by machine. In G. Gaskell [Ed.], Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 723–738). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press [Figure 44.6], by permission of Oxford University Press.)

Speech Recognition by Machines

This chapter was mainly concerned with human speech recognition (HSR), but technological advances in the past decades have allowed the topic of speech perception and recognition to become an economically profitable challenge for engineers and applied computer scientists. A complete review of Automatic Speech Recognition’s (ASR) historical background, issues, and state of the art is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, a brief analysis of ASR in the context of the key topics in HSR reviewed earlier reveals interesting commonalities as well as divergences among the preoccupations and goals of the two fields.

Perhaps the most notable difference between HSR and ASR is their ultimate aim. Whereas HSR aims to provide a description of how the speech system works (processes, representations, functional architecture, biological plausibility), ASR aims to deliver speech transcriptions as error-free as possible, regardless of the biological and cognitive validity of the underlying algorithms. The success of ASR is typically measured by the percentage of words correctly identified from speech samples varying in their acoustic and lexical complexity. While increasing computer capacity and speed have allowed ASR performance to improve substantially since the early systems of the 1970s (e.g., Jelinek, 1976 ; Klatt, 1977 ), ASR accuracy is still about an order of magnitude behind its HSR counterpart (Moore, 2007 ; see Fig. 26.11 ).

What is the cause of the enduring performance gap between ASR and HSR? Given that the basic constraints imposed by the signal (sequentiality, continuity, variability) are the same for humans and machines, it is tempting to conclude that the gap between ASR and HSR will not be bridged until the algorithms of the former resemble those of the latter. And currently, they do not. The architecture of most ASR systems is almost entirely data driven: Its structure is expressed in terms of a network of sequence probabilities calculated over large corpora of natural speech (and their supervised transcription). The ultimate goal of the corpora, or training data, is to provide a database of acoustic-phonetic information sufficiently large that an appropriate match can be found for any input sound sequence. The larger the corpora, the tighter the fit between the input and the acoustic model (e.g., triphones instantiated in hidden Markov models, HMM, cf. Rabiner & Juang, 1993 ), and the lower the ASR system’s error rate (Lamel, Gauvain, & Adda, 2000 ). By that logic, hours of training corpora, not human-machine avatars, are the solution for increased accuracy, giving support to the controversial assertion that human models have so far hindered rather than promoted ASR progress (Jelinek, 1985 ). However, Moore and Cutler ( 2001 ) estimated that increasing corpus sizes from their current average capacity (1,000 hours or less, which is the equivalent of the average hearing time of a 2-year-old) to 10,000 hours (average hearing time of a 10-year-old) would only drop the ASR error rate to 12%.

Thus, a data-driven approach to speech recognition is constrained by more than just the size of the training data set. For example, the lexical and syntactic content of the training data often determines the application for which the ASR system is likely to perform best. Domain-specific systems (e.g., banking transactions by phone) generally reach high recognition accuracy levels even when they are fed continuous speech produced by various speakers, whereas domain-general systems (e.g., speech-recognition packages on personal computers) often have to compromise on the number of speakers they can recognize and/or training time in order to be effective (Everman et al., 2005 ). Therefore, one of the current stumbling blocks of ASR systems is language modeling (as opposed to acoustic modeling), that is, the extent to which the systems include higher order knowledge—syntax, semantics, pragmatics—from which inferences can be made to refine the mapping between the signal and the acoustic model. Existing ASR language models are fairly simple, drawing upon the distributional methods of acoustic models in that they simply provide the probability of all possible word sequences based on their occurrences in the training corpora. In that sense, an ASR system can predict that “necklace” is a possible completion of “The burglar stole the…” because of its relatively high transitional probability in the corpora, not because of the semantic knowledge that burglars tend to steal valuable items, and not because of the syntactic knowledge that a noun phrase typically follows a transitional verb. Likewise, ASR systems rarely include the kind of lexical feedback hypothesized in HSR models like TRACE (McClelland & Elman, 1986 ) and ART (Grossberg, 1986 ). Like Merge (Norris et al., 2000 ), ASR systems only allow lexical information and the language model to influence the relative weights of activated candidates, but not the fit between the signal and the acoustic model (Scharenborg Norris, ten Bosch, & McQueen, 2005 ).

While the remaining performance gap between ASR and HSR is widely recognized in the ASR literature, there seems to be no clear consensus on the direction to take in order to reduce it (Moore, 2007 ). Given today’s ever-expanding computer power, increasing the size of training corpora is probably the easiest way of gaining a few percentage points in accuracy, at least in the short term. More radical solutions are also being envisaged, however. For example, attempts are being made to build more linguistically plausible acoustic models by using phonemes (as opposed to di/triphone HMMs) as basic segmentation units (Ostendorf, Digilakis, & Kimball, 1996 ; Russell, 1993 ) or by preserving and exploiting fine acoustic detail in the signal instead of treating it as noise (Carlson & Hawkins, 2007 ; Moore & Maier, 2007 ).

The scientific study of speech perception started in the early 1950s under the impetus of research carried out at the Haskins Laboratories, following the development of the Pattern Playback device. This machine allowed Franklin S. Cooper and his colleagues to visualize speech in the form of a decomposable spectrogram and, reciprocally, to create artificial speech by sounding out the spectrogram. Contemporary speech perception research is both a continuation of its earlier preoccupations with the building blocks of speech perception and a departure from them. On the one hand, the quest for universal units of speech perception and attempts to crack the many-to-one mapping code are still going strong. Still alive, too, is the debate about the involvement of gestural knowledge in speech perception, reignited recently by neuroimaging techniques and the discovery of mirror neurons. On the decline are the ideas that speech is special with respect to audition and that infants are born with speech- and species-specific perceptual capacities. On the other hand, questions have necessarily spread beyond the sublexical level, following the assumption that decoding the sensory input must be investigated in the context of the entirety of the language system—or, at the very least, some of its phonologically related components. Indeed, lexical feedback, online or learning related, has been shown to modulate the perceptual experience of an otherwise unchanged input. Likewise, what used to be treated as speech surface details (e.g., indexical variations), and commonly filtered out for the sake of modeling simplicity, are now more fully acknowledged as being preserved during encoding, embedded in long-term representations, and used during retrieval. Speech-perception research in the coming decades is likely to expand its interest not only to the rest of the language system but also to domain-general cognitive functions such as attention and memory as well as practical applications (e.g., ASR) in the field of artificial intelligence. At the same time, researchers have become increasingly concerned with the external validity of their models. Attempts to enhance the ecological contribution of speech research are manifest in a sharp increase in studies using natural speech (conversational, accented, disordered) as the front end of their models.

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Chapter 6: Indirect Learning and Human Potential

Speech and Language

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock .

Sigmund Freud

Observational learning has been evidenced in many species of animals including birds (Zentall, 2004) but approximations to speech appear practically unique to humans. Paul Revere famously ordered a lantern signal of “one if by land and two if by sea” during his Revolutionary War midnight ride through the streets of Massachusetts. This is not functionally different from the distinct alarm calls emitted by vervet monkeys in the presence of eagles, snakes, and leopards (Strushaker, 1967; Seyfarth and Cheney, 1980). Through observational learning, young vervets learn to respond to different screeches for “heads up”, “heads down”, and “look around!” Vervets hide under trees to the eagle warning, rear on their hind paws to the snake warning, and climb the nearest tree to the leopard warning. Recently, even more descriptive “speech” has been demonstrated in prairie dogs (Slobodchikoff, Perla, & Verdolin, 2009). These examples are the closest we see to social learning of speech in other animals. Slobodchikoff (2012) has written a fun and informative review of animal communication entitled Chasing Dr. Doolittle: Learning the Language of Animals .

Meltzoff and Moore (1977, 1983) demonstrated unambiguous examples of imitation in infant humans as young as 12- to 21-days of age, leading to the conclusion that humans normally do not need to be taught this mode of learning.

Watch the following video of Dr. Metzloff describing his research demonstrating imitation in young infants:

Skinner (1986) contributed an interesting but admittedly post-hoc speculative theoretical article describing possible evolutionary scenarios for the adaptive learning of imitation and speaking. An imitative prompt is more informative than an ordinary gestural prompt in that it specifies the specific characteristics of a desired response. Speech is preferable to signing as a means of communication since it is possible at long distances and other circumstances where individuals cannot see each other.

Hockett’s Features of Language

If we are to understand human behavior, we must understand how language is acquired and its impact upon subsequent adaptive learning. Before we proceed, we must consider what we mean by language. Charles Hockett (1960) listed 13 features that he considered essential to language:

• Vocal-auditory channel – We saw in Chapter 1 that the human being’s brain, with its disproportional amount of space dedicated to the tongue, larynx, and voice box, facilitates the acquisition of speech. Sign language, involving a manual-visual channel, is mostly restricted to deaf people and those wishing to communicate with them.
• Broadcast transmission and directional reception – Sound is sent out in all directions while being received in a single place. This provides an adaptive advantage in that people can communicate with others out of their line of sight.
• Rapid fading (transitoriness) – Sounds are temporary. Writing and audio-recordings are techniques used to address this limitation of speech (and alas, lectures).
• Interchangeability – One must be able to transmit and receive messages.
• Total feedback – One must be able to monitor one’s own use of language.
• Specialization – The organs used for language must be specially adapted to that task. Human lips, tongues and throats meet this criterion.
• Semanticity – Specific signals can be matched with specific meanings. Different sounds exist for different words.
• Arbitrariness – There is no necessary connection between a meaningful unit (e.g., word) and its reference.
• Discreteness – There are distinct basic units of sound (phonemes) and meaning (morphemes).
• Displacement – One must be able to communicate about things that are not present. One must be able to symbolically represent the past and the future.
• Productivity – The units of sound and meaning must be able to be combined to create new sounds and meaningful units (sentences).
• Duality of patterning – The sequence of meaningful units must matter (i.e., there must be a syntax).
• Traditional Transmission – Specific sounds and words must be learned from other language users.

Although all of Hockett’s features are frequently cited as  essential characteristics of language , the first three elements are restricted to speech. These features do not apply to sign language, letter writing, reading, and other examples of non-vocal/auditory modes of symbolic communication.  The essential characteristics are interchangeability, semanticity, arbitrariness, discreteness, productivity, syntax, and displacement.

Describe Hockett’s major characteristics of language.

Language Acquisition

The principles of predictive and control learning help us understand the acquisition of language and the role it plays in subsequent human adaptation. At a few months old, infants start to babble and are able to make all the possible human sounds. Eventually, as the child is increasingly exposed to the sounds of her/his social unit, some of the sounds are “selected” and others removed from the repertoire. Routh (1969) demonstrated that infants are able to make subtle discriminations in sounds. The frequency of speaking either vowels or consonants could be increased if selectively reinforced with tickles and “coos.” It has been demonstrated that the mother’s vocal imitation of a child’s verbalizations is also an effective reinforcer (Pelaez, Virues-Ortega, and Gewirtz, 2011).

Children may learn their first word as early as 9 months. Usually the first words are names of important people (“mama”, “dada”), often followed by greetings (“hi”, “bye”) and favored foods. As described in Chapter 5, classical conditioning procedures may be used to establish word meaning. For example, the sound “papa” is consistently paired with a particular person. Children are encouraged to imitate the sound in the presence of the father. It may be the source of humor (or embarrassment) when a child over-generalizes and uses the word for another male adult. With experience, children learn to attend to the relevant dimensions and apply words consistently and exclusively to the appropriate stimuli or actions (e.g., “walk”, “run”, “eat”, etc.). Similarly, words are paired with the qualities of objects (e.g., “red”, “circle”, etc.) and actions (e.g., “fast”, “loud”, etc.). Children learn to abstract out the common properties through the process of concept formation. Words are also paired with quantities of objects. In the same way that “redness” may be a quality of diverse stimuli having little else in common, “three-ness” applies to a particular number of diverse stimuli.

Much of our vocabulary applies to non-observable objects or events. It is important to teach a child to indicate when “hurt” or “sick”, or “happy” or “sad.” In these instances, an adult must infer the child’s feelings from his/her behavior and surrounding circumstances. For example, if you see a child crying after bumping her head, you might ask if it hurts. As vocabulary size increases, meaning can be established through higher-order conditioning using only words. For example, if a child is taught that a jellyfish is a “yucky creature that lives in the sea and stings”, he/she will probably become fearful when swimming in the ocean.

Since different languages have different word orders for the parts of speech, syntax (i.e., grammatical order) must be learned. At about 18 months to 2 years of age, children usually start to combine words and by 2-1/2 they are forming brief (not always grammatical) sentences. With repeated examples of their native language, children are able to abstract out schemas (i.e., an organized set of rules) for forming grammatical sentences (e.g., “the car is blue”, “the square is big”, etc.). It is much easier to learn grammatical sequences of nonsense words (e.g., The maff vlems oothly um the glox nerfs) than non-grammatical sequences (e.g., maff vlem ooth um glox nerf). This indicates the role of schema learning in the acquisition of syntax (Osgood, 1957, p.88). Children usually acquire the intricacies of grammar by about 6 years of age. In the next chapter, we will describe the process of abstraction as it applies to concept learning, schema development, and problem-solving.

Vocabulary size has been found to be an important predictor of success in school (Anderson & Freebody, 1981). Major factors influencing vocabulary size include socio-economic status (SES) and the language proficiencies of significant others, particularly the mother. In a monumental project, Hart and Risley (1995) recorded the number of words spoken at home by parents and 7-month-to 36-month-old children in 42 families over a 3-year period. They found that differences in the children’s IQ scores, language abilities, and success in school were all related to how much their parents spoke to them. They also found significant differences in the manner in which low and high SES parents spoke to their children. Low SES parents were more likely to make demands and offer reprimands while high SES parents were more likely to engage in extended conversations, discussion, and problem-solving. Whereas the number of reprimands given for inappropriate behavior was about the same for low and high SES parents, high SES parents administered much more praise.

Speech becomes an important and efficient way of communicating one’s thoughts, wishes, and feelings. This is true for the Nukak as well as for us. Given the harshness of their living conditions and the limits of their experiences, the Nukak have much in common with low SES children within our society. Declarative statements (e.g., “the stick is sharp”, “the stove is hot”; “pick up the leaves”, “don’t fight with your sister”; “I am happy”, “you are tired”, become the primary basis for conducting much of the everyday chores and interactions.

Describe how control learning principles apply to the acquisition of language.

Spoken language is observed in stone-age hunter/gatherer and technologically advanced cultures. There has been controversy concerning the role of nature and nurture in human language development (Chomsky, 1959; Skinner, 1957). Skinner, writing from a functionalist/behavioral perspective, tellingly entitled his book Verbal Behavior , not “Using Language.” Watson (1930) described thinking as “covert speech” while Skinner (1953) referred to “private behavior.” According to Vygotsky (originally published in 1934), children initially “think out loud” and eventually learn to “think to themselves.” Skinner suggested that speaking and thinking were not different in kind from other forms of behavior and that respondent conditioning (predictive learning) and operant conditioning (control learning) could provide the necessary experiential explanatory principles. There was no need to propose a separate “language acquisition device” to account for human speech.

We saw in Chapter 5, how predictive learning principles could be applied to the acquisition of word meaning. Basically, Skinner argued that words could serve as overt and covert substitutes for the control learning ABCs. As antecedents, words could function as discriminative stimuli and warning stimuli. For example, “Give mommy a kiss” or “Heads up!” As consequences, words can substitute for reinforcers and punishers (e.g., “Thank you.”, “Stop that!”). A rule is a common, useful, and important type of verbal statement including each of the control learning ABCs (Hayes, 1989). That is, a rule specifies the circumstances (antecedents) under which a particular act (behavior) is rewarded or punished (consequence). For example, a parent might instruct a child, “At dinner, if you eat your vegetables you can have your dessert” or, “When you get to the curb look both ways before crossing the street or you could get hit by a car.”

Chomsky, a psycholinguist, submitted a scathing critique of Skinner’s book, emphasizing how human genetics appears to include a “language acquisition device.” The Chapter 1 picture of the human homunculus, with its disproportional brain space dedicated to the body parts involved in speech, certainly suggests that the human being’s structure facilitates language acquisition. The homunculus also implies there is adaptive value to spoken language; otherwise these structures would not have evolved. Proposing a “language acquisition device”, similar to proposing an instinct to account for speech, is a circular pseudo-explanation. The language acquisition device is inferred from the observation of speech, it does not explain speech. Remember, a psychological explanation must specify specific hereditary and/or environmental causes. Chomsky does neither, whereas Skinner is quite specific about the types of experience that will foster different types of verbal behavior. It is not as though Skinner denies the role of human structure in the acquisition of speech or its importance as indicated in the following quote. “The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change” (Skinner, 1986). Neuroscientists and behavioral neuroscientists are actively engaged in research examining how our “all-purpose acquisition device” (i.e., brain) is involved in the learning of speech, reading, quantitative skills, problem-solving, etc.

Human beings may have started out under restricted geographic and climatic conditions in Africa, but we have spread all over the globe (Diamond, 2005). We developed different words and languages tailored to our environmental and social circumstances. There is much to be learned from the school of hard knocks, but it is limited to our direct experience and can be difficult or dangerous. Our verbal lives enormously expand learning opportunities beyond our immediate environment to anything that can be imagined. Indirect learning (i.e., observation or language) often speeds up adaptive learning and eliminates danger. It is not surprising that human parents universally dedicate a great deal of effort to teaching their children to speak. It makes life easier, safer, and better for them as well as their children.

MacCorquodale (1969) wrote a retrospective appreciation of Skinner’s book along with a comprehensive and well-reasoned response (1970) to Chomsky’s critique. Essentially, MacCorquodale described Chomsky as a structuralist and Skinner as a functionalist. That is, Chomsky attempted to describe how the structure of the mind enables language. Skinner was concerned with how language enables individuals to adapt to their environmental conditions. Paraphrasing Mark Twain, an article marking the 50th anniversary of its publication concluded that “Reports of the death of Verbal Behavior and behaviorism have been greatly exaggerated” (Schlinger, 2008).

Reading and Writing

It is language in written form that has enabled the rapid and widespread dissemination of knowledge within and between cultures. It is also the medium for recording our evolving advances in knowledge and technology. Early forms of Bronze Age writing were based on symbols or pictures etched in clay. Later Bronze Age writing started to include phonemic symbols that were precursors to the Iron Age Phoenician alphabet consisting of 22 characters representing consonants (but no vowels). The Phoenician alphabet was adopted by the Greeks and evolved into the modern Roman alphabet. The phonetic alphabet permitted written representation of any pronounceable word in a language.

The Arabic numbering system was originally invented in India before being transmitted to Europe in the Middle Ages. It permits written representation of any quantity, real or imagined, and is fundamental to mathematics and the scientific method, which rely on quantification and measurement. The alphabet and Arabic numbers permit words to become “permanent” in comparison to their transitory auditory form. This written permanence made it possible to communicate with more people over greater distances and eventually to build libraries. The first great library was established at Alexandria, Egypt in approximately 300 years B.C. Scrolls of parchment and papyrus were stored on the walled shelves of a huge concrete building (Figure 6.5).   Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1439 enabled mass publication of written material throughout Western Europe (Figure 6.6). Today, e-books are available on electronic readers that can be held in the palm of your hands (Figure 6.7)! It should not be surprising that college student differences in knowledge correlate with their amount of exposure to print (Stanovich and Cunningham, 1993).

Figure 6.5  The library at Alexandria.

Figure 6.6  Gutenberg’s printing press.

Figure 6.7  The library now.

Attributions

Figure 6.5 “The library at Alexandria” by Wikimedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Figure 6.6 “Guttenburg’s printing press” by עדירל is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Figure 6.7 “A mazon Kindle” by Jleon is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

essential features of language include:

interchangeability (ability to transmit and receive messages)

semanticity (specific signals have specific meanings)

arbitrariness of connection between a meaningful unit (e.g., word) and its reference

discreteness of basic units of sound (phonemes) and meaning (morphemes)

productivity (units of meaning must be combined to create new sounds and sentences

syntax (the sequence of meaningful units must matter)

displacement (ability to communicate about things that are not present in the past and future)

specifies the circumstances (antecedents) under which a particular act (behavior) is rewarded or punished

permits written representation of any pronounceable word in a language

permits written representation of any quantity, real or imagined; fundamental to mathematics and the scientific method

Psychology Copyright © by Jeffrey C. Levy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Psychology Behind Excessive Talking

Why Some People Compulsively Talk More Than Others

• Personality
• Other Causes
• Management Tips

Speech is a part of how our brains are programmed to socially connect and survive. But some people may talk excessively. Excessive talking is the act of overtalking or compulsively talking. Someone who talks too much may have a mental health disorder, such as bipolar disorder , or it could simply be a behavioral or personality trait.

This article discusses the psychology of people who talk too much. Read on to learn which disorders can cause this trait, along with how to deal with people who talk too much.

Excessive Talking and Personality

Excessive talking can occur due to personality traits or characteristics.

People who are more extroverted will recharge by engaging socially with others in conversation, while introverts recharge by having time alone. Extroverts often think out loud, while introverts process more internally through deeper thinking.

To a more reserved, less talkative introvert, an extrovert may seem to talk excessively, when the issue could be due to a difference in personality traits.

Why Some People Talk Too Much

Often, the person who is talking excessively may not know they are doing it. Excessive talking can be caused by the following mental health conditions:

• Bipolar disorder : People with bipolar disorder may talk excessively with pressured (rapid and urgent) speech when their brain is in a manic state.
• Schizophrenia : Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that affects the brain and often influences how someone talks, causing pressured speech and disorganized (difficult-to-follow) speech.
• Personality disorders : People with personality disorders, particularly narcissistic personality disorder , may talk excessively.
• Anxiety disorders : Anxiety can cause someone to speak excessively. While many with social anxiety may avoid social interactions, some may inadvertently talk excessively when in social situations out of nervousness and anxiety.
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) : People with ADHD may talk excessively and interrupt frequently.

Categories of Excessive Talking

Assessing a person's speech is a part of a mental status exam, which is a type of assessment that mental healthcare providers often perform during appointments. The quality of a person's speech can often give indications of their mental status.

The following are categories of excessive talking.

Pressured speech is rapid, urgent speech to the point that others may find it difficult to interrupt or get a word in. This can occur when someone is having severe anxiety, has schizophrenia, is under the influence of substances, or might be experiencing a manic episode, which can occur with bipolar disorder.

Hyperverbal

Hyperverbal speech is talking fast with an increased rate or number of words. This type of speech can indicate anxiety or that a person is currently experiencing a manic episode.

Disorganized 

Disorganized speech moves rapidly from one idea to the other in ways that can be hard to follow.

Disorganized speech may also include ideas that do not connect to each other or are out of context. Disorganized speech can occur due to schizophrenia. Examples include the following:

• Neologisms are made-up words or slang that can be fun to use and indicate shifts in a language. But in the context of disorganized speech, the use of neologisms is unclear or out of context.
• Sentences with words that do not connect
• Echolalia , or repeating exactly what someone else says
• Rhyming words (words that rhyme but do not connect as concepts)

Compulsive talking occurs when someone feels they cannot stop talking or they compulsively keep talking nonstop. This can occur for several reasons, including severe anxiety, the impact of substances, and ADHD.

With ADHD, the brain will jump quickly from concept to concept. People with ADHD already have poor impulse control, and they can often feel anxious enough to talk excessively, have difficulty taking turns in conversations, and frequently interrupt others.

Sometimes people talk compulsively because it's actually a way of avoiding painful emotions. They are so busy talking, they can push away their feelings to avoid dealing with the pain or anxiety that may come with the emotions.

Treating Excessive Talking

People who talk too much may benefit from seeing a healthcare provider in order to explore the cause and find the best possible treatment options. But there are some management strategies you can try yourself.

Self-Management Skills for Excessive Talking

Research indicates that up to 40% of a person's speech is about themselves. Talking about oneself can activate the reward centers of the brain. So while socially it may be necessary to cease talking excessively, it may be challenging to go against the wiring of the brain.

Here are a few strategies for managing excessive talking.

• Listen more than you speak : Take a moment of silence and hold off on speaking to improve your listening skills. Try taking time to notice details as the other person talks that might normally be missed.
• Think of tennis : Conversations shouldn't be a one-way experience, but more like a tennis match, with the conversation, like the tennis ball, going back and forth between people.
• Set a mental timer : In the first few seconds of a conversation you have someone's full attention, but the longer you go on, particularly as you get closer to a minute, you may start to lose their attention, or even worse, become aggravating.
• Notice social cues : If you have a tendency to overtalk, pay extra attention to social cues while you're talking. If people start to look around, fidget, or check their watch or phone, you may have overstayed your verbal welcome.

Therapy Options 

Excessive talking can create a burden on social interactions. Therapy may be beneficial as a treatment.

The following therapy options may help with excessive talking:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) : CBT has proven effective for treating many causes of excessive talking, including anxiety and ADHD.
• Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) : DBT is a type of CBT often used to help people with narcissistic personality disorder (which can be a cause of excessive talking). It focuses on gaining emotional control and regulation skills, which may be helpful in treating excessive talking.

How to Deal With People Who Talk Too Much

Here are a few tips for handling excessive talkers:

• Put a limit on it : Let them know you are only available to talk for a set amount of time, such as 15 or 20 minutes. It may help to remind them as the time gets closer to the end that there are only a couple of minutes left.
• Excuse yourself : You may have to interrupt them to excuse yourself from the conversation.
• Plan for it : If you're heading into a situation in which you know you'll encounter excessive talkers—or if you'll be in a situation in which you don't have an easy way to exit the conversation—it may help to occupy yourself with a craft or activity to keep yourself busy and out of the conversation.

Excessive talking occurs when a person talks compulsively or excessively. Reasons that someone may talk excessively include mental health disorders, personality characteristics, and personality disorders.

Excessive talking can create a social burden for both the talking person and their listeners. There are things you can do to avoid overtalking, like setting a time limit on conversations, paying attention to social cues, or seeking the help of a mental health provider.

Weiner L, Doignon-Camus N, Bertschy G, Giersch A. Thought and language disturbance in bipolar disorder quantified via process-oriented verbal fluency measures . Sci Rep . 2019 Oct;9(1):14282. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-50818-5

American Psychiatric Association.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .  5th ed. Washington D.C.; 2013. doi:10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596

Norris DR, Clark MS, Shipley S. The mental status examination .  Am Fam Physician.  2016 Oct 15;94(8):635-641.

Patel KR, Cherian J, Gohil K, Atkinson D.  Schizophrenia: overview and treatment options .  PT . 2014;39(9):638-645.

Kaiser Permanente. Symptoms of schizophrenia disorganized speech and behaviors .

American Psychological Association. APA dictionary of psychology neologism .

Green BC, Johnson KA, Bretherton L.  Pragmatic language difficulties in children with hyperactivity and attention problems: an integrated review: Pragmatic language and ADHD symptoms .  Int J Lang Commun Disord . 2014;49(1):15-29. doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12056

Patel J, Patel P. Consequences of repression of emotion: physical health, mental health and general well being . IJPR. 2019;1(3):16-21. doi:10.14302/issn.2574-612X.ijpr-18-2564

Tamir DI, Mitchell JP. Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding .  Proc Natl Acad Sci USA . 2012;109(21):8038-8043. doi:10.1073/pnas.1202129109

Strålin E, Thorell L, Szybek K, Lundgren T, Bölte S, Bohman B. Cognitive-behavioral group therapy for ADHD predominantly inattentive presentation: A feasibility study of a new treatment protocol . Nordic Psychol . 2022 Jan;74(4):325-339. doi:10.1080/19012276.2021.2020683

Reed-Knight B, Fischer S. Treatment of narcissistic personality disorder symptoms in a dialectical behavior therapy framework: A discussion and case example . In: The handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder: Theoretical approaches, empirical findings, and treatments. 2011;1(1):466–475.

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.  8 tips on setting boundaries for your mental health .

By Michelle C. Brooten-Brooks, LMFT Brooten-Brooks is a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Georgia. She has been covering health and medical topics as a journalist for over 20 years.

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This guide was created to take you along a step by step process to develop a speech. It is mainly focused on helping you brainstorm, identify, and define a topic to research.

This is a general guide, so it may vary from your classroom assignments. As always, refer to your professor and syllabus for your project requirements. 

Narrow Your Topic

Evaluate your topic, cite your sources.

Consider these questions:

• What subjects or ideas interest you?
• What kinds of life experience do you have?
• What kinds of issues have affected you or people you care about?
• Do you have a passion about an idea, a question, a subject? How can you explain or describe it such that others might be passionate about it as well?
• Does your subject have an edge? Does the topic have passionate supporters and opponents as well as being logical and reasonable? Is it debatable? Is it an unsolved problem?

A good practice is to make a list of ideas. As an example, here is an imaginary student’s list of ideas:

With the topics on your list, ask yourself these questions:

• Which topics are most worthy of your time?
• Why is your topic significant?
• Does it work with my assignment? (Is your speech informative, persuasive, etc.)

It is often beneficial (unless the topic is given or encouraged) to avoid heavily discussed topics. This helps to keep the speech interesting rather than giving an audience information they hear regularly.

Overused topics may include abortion, global warming, affirmative action, the death penalty, recycling, and sex and violence in the media. There is always a possibility to find an interesting angle or portion of the topic, but make sure you verify it with a professor first.

Let's take our student's list as an example. Our student might not want to write a speech on recycling, but maybe they have a a great way to reuse/remake something that is normally thrown out. This could work as a topic for a demonstration speech, though they would need to have the topic approved.

What are some other topics ideas from this list?

One way to develop these ideas is to make a concept map. Below is a sample of the student's concept map if they focused on knitting.

• Concept Mapping

Now this particular student enjoys mysteries and crime shows, because they like to figure out who the culprit is. The student needs to write an informative speech, and decides that they could inform others on how to solve mysteries.

Since it is a very large topic, the student decides to focus on helping people solve mysteries by informing them on how to tell if someone is lying .

After narrowing the topic, evaluate your speech to see if it is a good fit for your assignment.

• If it takes a while to explain your topic is either too complicated or too broad. Consider your time requirements and if you can adequately discuss the topic.
• Begin to focus on what you want to say and why. Part of this will already be dictated by the type of speech you are assigned. Making a concept map can help provide you with ideas.
• Who will hear the information? Will they have experience with the topic? What other factors will influence how they will interpret the information?
• You will want to use solid, scholarly information on the topic. General information might be easy to find, but you will need facts and research to back up your claims and information.

In our example the student’s evaluation would look like this:

Write out your research question or thesis statement. Underline words that you believe best represent the main ideas.

How can we determine if someone is lying to us?

Second, create a list of synonyms for each word you underlined and use these terms to search for resources.

Lying OR lie-spotting Face perception Body language. Deception.

You can add additional terms as you survey what is available:

Lying OR Deception AND workplace or business Friendship or workplace or business

As you gather resources be sure to evaluate the resources!

Check out the Searching Strategies for Websites and Databases for more tips. Check out the Evaluating Resources page to avoid choosing bad sources for your projects!

There are lots of reasons to provide references to the sources that you use.

Your audience may want to know how to investigate your topic further. By providing your resources you are helping others who are interested in the same topic.

You also need to credit the people who did the research you are using otherwise you will be claiming it is your own (even if unintentionally doing so). Plagiarism is a serious offense.

Here is a definition of plagiarism:

“Plagiarism is appropriating someone else's words or ideas without acknowledgment. To understand plagiarism we must consider two questions: (1) How is plagiarism like or unlike theft— (2) Why is plagiarism considered wrong; why should we acknowledge the originator of an idea.”

(Encyclopedia of Ethics. London: Routledge, 2001. Credo Reference. 17 April 2009 <http://www.credoreference.com/entry/7915618>.)

Just like in college writing, speeches should provide your audience with verbal cues to the information you have used: the SOURCE where you found your information. (This might be an interview, scholarly article, book, or website, etc.); the AUTHOR, when available, and the DATE when your source was published or accessed (for web sources and interviews).

Here are three ways to incorporate citations for your speech:

• Use quotation marks to attribute words of another person on your note cards. You can express quotations in your speech in several ways.
• Provide credit or citation such that the audience can trace back to the original source.
• Paraphrasing the main ideas WITH correct attribution.  A paraphrase will replace some of the words while keeping the main idea of the original work.

For more information on how to cite sources, see the “Citation” page in this guide.

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• Perspectives on Psychological Science

It’s difficult to determine when discussions of controversial topics became known as hate speech on college campuses across the country. But the metamorphosis has taken place all around us, and the costs are undeniable. Open debate has morphed into self-censorship and terrified silence; what used to be celebrated as an environment of fearless questioning has become a stultifying world of repression.

Intolerance of meaningful debate comes from both sides of the political spectrum. Talk of “black lives matter” constitutes hate speech for some, while “blue lives matter” fits the bill for others. Depending on the political leanings of their particular campus, professors, staff members and students are strongly discouraged from entertaining certain topics even privately, much less discussing them publicly on campus, because these discussions make some people uncomfortable. The risks and penalties are tangible and significant, from shaming and ostracizing, to fear of loss of tenure and jobs for professors and expulsion and dismissal for anyone else.

We considered these issues in a new article in Perspectives on Psychological Science on the controversies surrounding recent cancellations of campus talks. We drew mainly on psychological, legal and philosophical analyses to explain the polarization of positions, focusing on phenomena known as blind-spot bias, selective perception, motivated skepticism, my-side bias, groupthink and naïve realism, which help explain why dueling sides overestimate support for their own position and downgrade opponents’ views. In the campus disturbances, opponents did not simply interpret the same situation differently, they actually saw different things.

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Inside Higher Education

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Does Psychology Need More Effective Suspicion Probes?

Suspicion probes are meant to inform researchers about how participants’ beliefs may have influenced the outcome of a study, but it remains unclear what these unverified probes are really measuring or how they are currently being used.

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Mental Health Practitioners’ Understanding of Speech Pathology in a Regional Australian Community

Associated data.

Not applicable.

(1) Background: This study aimed to determine the level of knowledge and the perceptions of speech pathology held by a sample of regional mental health practitioners and to explore factors that facilitate understanding of the roles of speech pathologists in mental health. While mental health is recognised as an area of practice by Speech Pathology Australia, the inclusion of speech pathologists in mental health teams is limited. (2) Methods: An anonymous online survey was created using previously validated surveys and author generated questions and distributed to mental health practitioners in Central Queensland, Australia. (3) Results: Mental health practitioners had difficulty identifying speech pathology involvement when presented with case scenarios. Accuracy was poor for language-based cases, ranging from 28.81% to 37.29%. Participants who reported having worked with a speech pathologist were more likely to demonstrate higher scores on the areas of practice questions, [ r (53) = 0.301, p = 0.028], and the language scenarios [ r (58) = 0.506, p < 0.001]. They were also more likely to agree to statements regarding the connection between speech pathology and mental health, r (59) = 0.527, p < 0.001. (4) Conclusions: As found in this study, contact with speech pathologists is a strong predictor of mental health providers’ knowledge of the speech pathology profession. Thus, the challenge may be to increase this contact with mental health providers to promote inclusion of speech pathologists in the mental health domain.

1. Introduction

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which an individual realises their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and make a contribution to their community” [ 1 ]. In Australia, 17.5% of adults reported having a mental or behavioural condition, with women reporting at 19.2% and men at 15.8% [ 2 ]. Anxiety disorders were most commonly reported (11.2%), followed by mood (affective) disorders, including depression (9.3%) [ 2 ]. Mental health, and the promotion of mental health, is an integral part of public health and thus a concern for consumers, communities, professionals, and governments [ 1 ]. Law et al. [ 3 ] emphasised the importance of speech pathologists (SPs) being included in the public health discourse on the management of mental health, as communicative competence is central to successful relationships, social engagement and employment skills, all key determinants of mental health. Speech Pathology Australia state that “assessment, diagnosis and treatment of communication and swallowing difficulties of individuals with, or at risk of, mental illness is essential and within the scope of practice of speech pathologists” [ 4 ]. The promotion of and justification for SPs’ inclusion in interprofessional mental health teams requires an understanding of the complex and multifactorial relationship between communication, swallowing, and mental health disorders and the roles of SPs in their assessment and management [ 4 ].

Research has identified a link between developmental language disorders in childhood and poor mental health and well-being outcomes in adulthood [ 3 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Developmental language disorders continue to affect participation in cognitive and mental health assessments and management because communication (verbal and non-verbal) skills are integral to data gathering and treatment for mental health disorders, as well as establishing the therapeutic relationship necessary for positive health outcomes [ 10 ]. The diagnostic overlap between communication and psychological disorders validates the involvement of SPs in both the assessment and management of mental health disorders [ 11 ]. For example, communication and/or swallowing deficits are associated with disorders such as schizophrenia, feeding, and eating disorders and neurocognitive disorders (i.e., dementias) [ 12 , 13 ]. Interprofessional collaboration between SPs and traditional mental health clinicians, such as psychologists, has the potential to assist differential diagnosis of communication and swallowing difficulties embedded in the mental health profile and facilitate a communication friendly therapeutic environment [ 11 ].

SPs are routinely involved in the management of cognitive, communication, swallowing, and speech disorders that exist comorbidly with mental health disorders. This includes diagnoses such as traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, autism spectrum disorder, Fragile X syndrome, and stuttering, which all are commonly associated with mental health disorders, particularly depression and anxiety [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. It is apparent that many disorders within the typical areas of practice for SPs present with increased risks for mental health disorders and associated adverse psychosocial outcomes, including unemployment and incarceration. This reinforces the need to further investigate the routine inclusion of speech pathologists in interprofessional mental health teams, because anecdotal evidence suggests that this is currently not occurring, particularly in rural and regional areas.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provides funding to an estimated 500,000 Australians who have permanent and significant disability, including the psychosocial supports funding for individuals with mental health conditions [ 17 ]. The progressive rollout of the NDIS across Australia accentuates the need for mental health providers and participants in the NDIS to be cognisant of available services and to appropriately access these services. The inclusion of an interprofessional approach to the management of mental health disorders in children, adolescents, and adults is discussed in the literature, but with notable absence of specific reference to the speech pathology profession [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. In these studies, allied health professionals such as occupational therapists and psychologists were explicitly listed as team members, but SPs were not. The absence of SPs supports anecdotal evidence that SPs are not typically included in, or considered as core members of, interprofessional mental health teams on a global level.

In the Australian context, The Better Access to Mental Health Care initiative was introduced to Medicare in November 2006 to improve outcomes for people with common mental health disorders by offering a multidisciplinary approach [ 22 ]. Medicare rebates were made available for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and occupational therapists, but not SPs [ 22 ]. SPs were also not listed as a service to support Australian children and adolescents’ mental health and wellbeing in the 2015 Mental Health report [ 23 ]. This lack of inclusion as core mental health providers reiterates the need for increased consumer and professional awareness of the role that SPs can have in the holistic assessment and management of communication and swallowing disorders within the mental health context. It is possible they have not been included thus far due to a poor understanding of SPs’ areas of practice, particularly when these practice areas are presented within a real-life scenario (i.e., the vignettes). In a survey of community members, Janes et al., [ 24 ] found that disorders of language were poorly recognised as falling within the areas of practice for SPs, with only 20% of participants identifying language delays as a reason to see a SP. Similar to previous research (Janes et al. [ 25 ]; Mahmoud et al. [ 26 ]) also noted that while participants initially indicated a knowledge of SPs areas of practice (via yes/no questioning), actual knowledge (tested via vignettes) was lacking. If the scope of practice for speech pathology is not well understood in the community, it is possible that mental health providers may also not fully understand the various services SPs offer, which will impact appropriate referrals to, and access of, relevant services.

The aims of this study are to determine mental health practitioners’ level of knowledge, their perceptions of SPs, and to explore factors that facilitate understanding of SPs’ areas of practice and role in mental health. For this study mental health practitioners were identified as those included in the Medicare’s Better Access to Mental Health Care [ 22 ] document and acknowledged by organisations such as Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia [ 27 ] and Allied Health Professions Australia [ 28 ]. The study focused on a sample of mental health practitioners in Central Queensland, which includes regional, rural, remote, and very remote demographics. This region was specifically targeted because these demographics are associated with reduced access to health care services and increased risk of poor mental health [ 29 ]. Early access to services at the onset of a mental illness is crucial and may even prevent some mental illnesses from occurring [ 30 ].

This study proposes the following three research questions:

• How knowledgeable are mental health practitioners of speech pathologists’ broad areas of practice? It is hypothesised that mental health practitioners will be less able to identify areas of speech pathology practice when a condition is embedded in a scenario versus a yes/no format. We also hypothesised that they will have greater knowledge of speech related disorders (e.g., speech delay, voice, and stuttering) compared to developmental language disorders.
• How aware are mental health practitioners of the specific involvement of speech pathologists in the mental health arena? It is hypothesised that mental health practitioners will have limited awareness of the impact of developmental language disorders on mental health, the co-existence of communication disorders with mental health disorders and the increased risk of swallowing disorder in people with mental health conditions.
• What factors facilitate knowledge of speech pathologists’ areas of practice and role in mental health? It is hypothesised that a range of employment factors (e.g., years of experience, employment settings) will facilitate greater knowledge of SPs’ areas of practice and role in mental health.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. survey development.

The survey included 27 questions organised into four sections ( Supplementary Material ). The first section gathered information about the respondent and their personal experiences with SPs. The remaining three sections collated information on participants’ knowledge of speech pathology. Firstly, participants used a one-to-five Likert scale to rate the likelihood of SP involvement for 18 general areas of practice such as attention and concentration, play and imaginative skills, social communication, theory of mind, and critical thinking skills. SP involvement was appropriate for all 18 areas. The next section included seven vignettes, derived and used in previous studies on public awareness of speech pathology [ 25 , 26 , 31 , 32 ]. Each vignette described a child with a speech or language delay and participants had to indicate whether the child would require SPs’ intervention. The final section included seven author generated statements relating to the involvement of SPs in mental health (e.g., “There are higher prevalence rates of swallowing disorders in people with diagnosed mental health conditions”) and participants needed to rate how strongly they agreed with the statement.

2.2. Survey Dissemination

Ethical approval for the current study was granted by the appropriate ethics committee, project number H17/05-073. Data was collected online using the SurveyMonkey platform. The survey link was sent by email to mental health facilities, and other psychologists and occupational therapists in the Central Queensland region. Recipients were encouraged to forward the link to other professionals working within mental health.

2.3. Data Analysis

Quantitative data were analysed using the IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Statistics (version 26, IBM, NY, USA). Due to the aims of the study, responses from SPs were excluded. The professions of social work and counsellors were recoded as ‘counselling’; and pharmacy, nursing, and medical were recoded as ‘medical’. In addition to individual scores for the vignettes, a combined score was calculated for responses to speech versus language vignettes. An overall accuracy score was also calculated for areas of practice questions and SPs in mental health statements, with higher scores corresponding to greater accuracy. The analyses employed in this study comprised descriptive measures and parametric tests including Pearson’s correlation ( r ), an independent t -test ( t ), and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA).

3.1. Participants

Sixty-one mental health professionals from Central Queensland, Australia completed the online survey. Table 1 outlines professional details of the participants. As shown, approximately two-thirds of participants were psychologists or occupational therapists (64%, n = 39). A significant majority of participants did not have a speech pathologist on their team, (68.85%, n = 42), t (60) = 5.210, p < 0.001. Despite this, 70.49% ( n = 43) reported that they knew what speech pathologists do (self-reported knowledge); 60.65% ( n = 37) said they knew when to refer to SPs; and 72.1% ( n = 44) agreed that having a speech pathologist as a member of a mental health team would be valuable.

Participants.

3.2. Research Question 1—How Knowledgeable Are Mental Health Practitioners of SPs’ Broad Areas of Practice?

As evident in Table 2 , the areas of practice that were most frequently identified as necessitating speech pathology input were difficulties with speech, voice, oral motor/swallowing, receptive, and expressive language. Conversely, the areas least identified were impulse control, extraneous bodily movements, attention and concentration, medication profile, and comorbidities. The results from the paediatric vignettes ( Table 3 ) indicated that overall, accurate identification of SPs’ involvement in various clinical cases was low, ranging from 25.42% for a scenario describing a voice disorder to 54.24% for one describing an articulation disorder (i.e., lisp). Both scenarios would be classified as speech disorders. Identification of the need for SPs involvement in cases describing language (including literacy) disorders was also low, ranging from 28.81% to 37.29% ( Table 3 ).

Areas of practice for speech pathologists.

Paediatric vignette scores.

3.3. Research Question 2—How Aware Are Mental Health Practitioners of the Specific Involvement of SPs in the Mental Health Arena?

Participants were asked to rate their level of agreement for seven statements related to SPs and mental health ( Table 4 ). Most participants accurately responded to five of the seven statements. These statements were related to (1) the connection between behavioural disorders, psychological trauma, and children in care to communication difficulties; (2) the increased likelihood of mental health concerns for those with childhood language difficulties; and (3) the need for more speech pathologists’ to be involved in mental health care programs. Participants disagreed more than agreed to the two statements regarding the link between speech pathology and mental health (see statements 4 and 7 in Table 4 ).

Beliefs regarding communication and swallowing disorders.

3.4. Research Question 3—What Factors Influence Knowledge of SPs’ Areas of Practice and Roles in Mental Health?

Normality of data was confirmed via visual inspection of quantile-quantile (QQ) plots. To explore whether participants’ accuracy on the scope of practice questions was related to their knowledge, experience, and attitudes to speech pathology, Pearson correlation coefficients were conducted. Results showed participants’ self-reported knowledge, r (53) = 0.391, p = 0.004; confidence in referring to a speech pathologist, r (53) = 0.494, p < 0.001; perceived value of a SPs, r (53) = 0.328, p = 0.017 and having worked with a speech pathologist before, r (53) = 0.301, p = 0.028 were significantly related. No significant relationships were found with any of the remaining variables (i.e., profession, experience, workplace, having a speech pathologist on the team). In addition, there was no significant effect of any of the independent variables on accuracy for the speech vignettes as a whole. The factors that were significantly related to participants’ greater accuracy on the language vignettes were having a speech pathologist on their team, r (58) = 0.331, p = 0.011; self-reported knowledge of speech pathology, r (58) = 0.531, p < 0.001; confidence in referring to a speech pathologist, r (58) = 0.486, p < 0.001; perceived value of a speech pathologist to the mental health team, r (58) = 0.434, p = 0.001; and having worked with a speech pathologist before, r (58) = 0.506, p < 0.001. Additionally, profession also impacted, with occupational therapists performing significantly better than the other professions on the language vignettes, F (3,54) = 5.182, p = 0.003.

Participants’ accuracy on mental health statements was significantly related to having a speech pathologist on their team, r (59) = 0.331, p = 0.010; self-reported knowledge of SPs, r (59) = 0.625, p < 0.001; confidence in referring to a speech pathologist, r (59) = 0.372, p = 0.001; perceived value of SPs, r (59) = 0.689, p < 0.001 and having worked with a speech pathologist before, r (59) = 0.527, p < 0.001. Additionally, one-way ANOVAs were conducted to note significant differences between the means of the relevant variables. The results indicated that participants who had worked with SPs before were significantly more confident in referring to a speech pathologist, F (4,56) = 20.075, p < 0.001 and they had a significantly greater self-reported knowledge of speech pathology, F (4,56) = 20.276, p < 0.001. They also placed significantly greater value on the role of SPs in mental health, F (4,56) = 9.133, p < 0.001 compared to mental health practitioners who had not worked with SPs.

4. Discussion

The aim of this study was to determine the level of knowledge and the perceptions of SPs held by a sample of mental health practitioners in Central Queensland. Speech Pathology Australia [ 1 , 12 ] endorses the inclusion of SPs in mental health teams, with SPs playing a critical role in the assessment and management of communication and swallowing disorders for both children and adults within the mental health contexts. Despite this endorsement, the current study shows that SPs do not appear to be routinely included in mental health teams with over two-thirds of the sample reporting that they do not currently work directly with SPs.

Overall, it appears as though the mental health practitioners who completed this survey know that speech, language, and swallowing are core business for SPs, as indicated by their high level of accuracy in identifying these areas as falling within SPs’ scope of practice. However, almost 52% ( n = 30) of participants were unsure or disagreed that SPs worked with attention and concentration, and almost 64% ( n = 37) either disagreed or were unsure that impulse control was within SPs’ areas of practice. This is at odds to the fact that SPs regularly work with attention, concentration, and impulse control difficulties as part of the profiles associated with autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, traumatic brain injury, and eating disorders [ 1 ].

The two areas least recognised by participants as within the areas of practice for SPs were extraneous bodily movements and medication profile. Extraneous bodily movements are present in many conditions SPs work with and often function as key markers for differential diagnosis of the dysarthrias (motor speech disorders) and types of neurological conditions [ 33 ]. However, 79% ( n = 46) of participants did not acknowledge this as an area to be considered by SPs. In addition, 77.58% ( n = 45) of participants did not think speech pathologists should be concerned with a patient’s medication profile. Medication induced dysphagia and other movement disorders either caused or were exacerbated by antipsychotic medications put patients at a much greater risk of swallowing disorders, a potentially life limiting condition that requires the expertise of SPs.

As hypothesised, mental health practitioners showed less knowledge of SPs’ areas of practice when the condition was embedded in a scenario (i.e., vignettes), identifying the need for speech pathology input less than half the time for all vignette cases except the one focused on a child with a lisp. However, the hypothesis that mental health practitioners would have a greater knowledge of speech related disorders compared to developmental language disorders was not supported as mental health practitioners showed similar difficulties for both types of vignettes. This reduced knowledge of SP practices is an area that needs further research as communication disorders (particularly language) are known to have a negative and lifelong impact on an individual’s educational and occupational achievement and psychosocial well-being [ 4 , 5 ].

Participants successfully identified that psychological trauma can negatively impact language development and that children in care are at a much greater risk of having a language disorder, social and emotional difficulties, and increased risk of contact with the criminal justice system. However, when participants were asked to rate their agreement to the statement that there is an increased likelihood of mental health concerns in those who initially presented with significant speech/language impairments as a child, they performed poorly. As noted above and in the introduction, there is a growing body of evidence supporting the link between a developmental language disorder as a child and mental health disorders as an adult [ 3 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. These results suggest that mental health practitioners are aware of the association between language disorders in children who have experienced trauma, including being in care, but that this did not translate to an awareness of the long-term impact of developmental language disorders on mental health and well-being.

Only 25% ( n = 15) of participants strongly agreed that there are many DSM-5 categories which include communication impairment in the diagnostic criteria even though the latest edition of the DSM-5 and ICD-11 classifications include a large number of disorders (e.g., depressive and anxiety disorders; trauma and stressor related disorders; neurocognitive disorders) as having associated communication and/or swallowing deficits and therefore within the realm of practice for SPs 12,34 Interprofessional collaboration between SPs and traditional mental health clinicians will assist differential diagnosis of communication and swallowing difficulties and enable appropriate treatment strategies.

Our third research question focused on factors that may facilitate or impede knowledge of SPs’ areas of practice and role in mental health. We had hypothesised that a range of employment factors might influence responses, including profession. However, profession was only found to significantly influence responses to the language vignettes with occupational therapists found to be more knowledgeable of paediatric developmental language disorders than other professionals in the study. This implies that profession is largely not a predictor of awareness of communication and swallowing disorders and that education efforts need to target all mental health practitioners equally. Additionally, neither setting nor length of experience as a mental health clinician affected knowledge of the role of SPs, thus all workplaces/experience levels need to be targeted in awareness campaigns.

The two most influential factors in knowledge of the areas of practice for SPs included having a speech pathologist on the team and having worked with a speech pathologist previously. When either of these two factors were present, mental health practitioners were found to be more accurate on the language vignettes and the speech pathology in mental health statements. Moreover, those who had previously worked with SPs were also more accurate on the areas of practice questions. The presence of these two factors also resulted in greater confidence in referring to SPs; assigning a higher value on SPs’ services in the mental health context and a superior self-reported knowledge of speech pathology. Mental health practitioners who have worked with SPs could be good advocates for the role of SPs in this context, but advocacy needs to extend to policy makers at national and international levels as the exclusion of SPs in the mental health arena is not uniquely Australian [ 18 , 21 ]. Perceiving speech and language therapy services as part of the public health umbrella, and hence promoting a health and well-being service delivery model for SPs, may be one way to facilitate inclusion on mental health teams [ 4 ].

One avenue in which recognition of the role that SPs have in the holistic assessment and management of people with mental health conditions is through the NDIS psychosocial supports funding. The psychosocial supports umbrella stipulates six core aspects of functional capacity, all of which are related to SPs. Despite SPs being excluded from previous funding for mental health supports, the NDIS psychosocial support funding opens the door for SPs to become integral members of mental health teams. However, for appropriate inclusion of SPs to occur, suitable referrals and requests for service must be made by the participant and/or service providers. This, in turn, requires enhanced appreciation of the roles of SPs, particularly with respect to communication, social interaction, learning, and self-management.

5. Conclusions

There is a growing body of evidence that supports a diagnostic overlap between communication and mental health disorders, psychosocial comorbidities, and the increased risk of dysphagia in individuals with mental health disorders. Despite this, SPs are not routinely included in mental health teams in Australia. This study aimed to contribute to the limited research on the inclusion of SPs in mental health teams and it highlighted the need for further research into SPs’ role in adolescents and adults with mental health conditions. The mental health practitioners surveyed in this study were most knowledgeable when SPs’ areas of practice (i.e., speech, oral motor, voice, and developmental language disorders) were explicitly identified. Knowledge of these same disorders was considerably lower when they were embedded within a scenario. This translates to a real-life context where mental health practitioners are presented with a case and need to make appropriate judgments about who should comprise the interprofessional mental health team. If mental health practitioners cannot recognise the signs of speech and language disorders, they are unlikely to include SPs on the team. Thus, a lack of exposure to SP compounds results in minimal inclusion of SPs in mental health teams. The challenge for the profession of speech pathology is to increase contact with mental health facilities and practitioners so that SPs can advocate for their routine inclusion in the assessment and management of people with mental health disorders.

Supplementary Materials

The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/healthcare9111485/s1 , File S1: Mental health practitioners’ awareness of speech pathology survey.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, T.J.; Methodology, T.J., T.S. and B.Z.; Supervision, T.S. and B.Z.; Writing—original draft, T.J.; Writing—review and editing, T.J., T.S. and B.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Central Queensland University Ethics Committee with project no. H17/05-073.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study at the commencement of the online anonymous survey. No identifying participant details were collected.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Speech Understanding as a Psychological Process

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Part of the book series: NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series ((ASIC,volume 59))

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An overview of recent psychological research into speech understanding is presented, with an emphasis on spoken word-recognition processes. Human speech understanding is shown to be interactive in character, with speech being understood as it is heard by optimally efficient processing procedures. The flow of analyses through the system is assumed to be controlled by the processing principles of bottom-up priority and of obligatory processing.

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Marslen-Wilson, W.D. (1980). Speech Understanding as a Psychological Process. In: Simon, J.C. (eds) Spoken Language Generation and Understanding. NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series, vol 59. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9091-3_2

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