ABSTRACT
Research on vocal alignment, the tendency for language users to match another individual's speech productions, suggests that multiple factors contribute to this behavior. Social and motivational goals, aspects of cognitive architecture, and linguistic flexibility may all affect the extent to which vocal alignment occurs, suggesting complex underlying mechanisms. The present study capitalized on the social and linguistic characteristics of Spanish-accented English to examine the relationship among these contributors to vocal alignment. American English-speaking adults participated in a shadowing task. Degree of vocal alignment was assessed by both acoustic measures and independent raters' judgments. Participants aligned to both native English and Spanish-accented productions, despite differences in attitudes to and intelligibility of the different accents. Individual differences in shadowers' vowel dispersion were also related to extent of vocal alignment, with greater dispersion associated with greater alignment. Acoustic measures were related to perceptual assessments of alignment and differed by accent type, suggesting that patterns of alignment may differ across accents. Overall, the current study demonstrates vocal alignment between talkers of differing language backgrounds and highlights the importance of acoustic and linguistic components of alignment behavior.
Subject(s)
Multilingualism , Speech/physiology , Voice/physiology , Adult , Female , Humans , Male , Phonetics , Speech PerceptionABSTRACT
Volunteer involvement in biological surveys is becoming common in conservation and ecology, prompting questions on the quality of data collected in such surveys. In a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on the quality of data collected by volunteers, we examined the characteristics of volunteers (e.g., age, prior knowledge) and projects (e.g., systematic vs. opportunistic monitoring schemes) that affect data quality with regards to standardization of sampling, accuracy and precision of data collection, spatial and temporal representation of data, and sample size. Most studies (70%, n = 71) focused on the act of data collection. The majority of assessments of volunteer characteristics (58%, n = 93) examined the effect of prior knowledge and experience on quality of the data collected, often by comparing volunteers with experts or professionals, who were usually assumed to collect higher quality data. However, when both groups' data were compared with the same accuracy standard, professional data were more accurate in only 4 of 7 cases. The few studies that measured precision of volunteer and professional data did not conclusively show that professional data were less variable than volunteer data. To improve data quality, studies recommended changes to survey protocols, volunteer training, statistical analyses, and project structure (e.g., volunteer recruitment and retention).
Subject(s)
Conservation of Natural Resources/methods , Data Accuracy , Datasets as Topic/standards , Surveys and Questionnaires/standards , VolunteersABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Epidemiologic studies suggest a protective effect of regular intake of vitamin C and vitamin E as antioxidant in the manifestation of coronary heart disease. Cigarette smoke contains a large amount of radicals and reactive oxygen-derived substances enhancing aggregation of platelets. We investigated the effect of vitamin C as an important antioxidant in human plasma on the aggregation of human platelets in smokers and nonsmokers. TEST PERSONS AND METHOD: Overall 40 persons (mean age: 28 +/- 9 years) were randomized. The groups of chronic smokers (21 +/- 9 "packyears") and nonsmokers consisted of 20 persons, respectively. In each group ten persons were treated with intravenous infusion of 3 g vitamin C or 100 ml 0.9% saline solution (placebo). The maximal aggregation was measured with an aggregometer after 0, 3, 6, and 24 hours with collagen concentrations of 0.5 microgram/ml and 1.0 microgram/ml, respectively. RESULTS: In smokers with vitamin C application the group comparison by Wilcoxon's rank test demonstrated a significant decrease of platelet aggregation after 6 hours for both collagen concentrations (0.5 microgram/ml and 1.0 microgram/ml) compared to the placebo group (p < or = 0.05), whereas nonsmokers with vitamin C application revealed a significant decrease of platelet aggregation after 3 and 6 hours for both collagen concentrations (0.5 microgram/ml and 1.0 microgram/ml) compared to the placebo group (p < or = 0.03). The comparison between smokers and nonsmokers regarding the effect of vitamin C on platelet aggregation for both collagen concentrations demonstrated no significant difference (3 hours: p = 0.84 and p = 0.97; 6 hours: p = 0.81 and p = 0.59; and 24 hours p = 0.57 and p = 0.06, not significant, respectively). CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that vitamin C exerts an unknown inhibitory effect on collagen-induced platelets aggregation. These observations may represent a further protective effect of vitamin C in the development of coronary heart disease.
