Much of the research in our lab centers around prosody, the interpretation of intent based on vocal modulation through changes in perceived pitch, voice intensity, voice quality and speech rate. Prosody is an invaluable tool to attribute emotions to other’s voices. In our evolutionary past, perceiving prosody allowed our ancestors to determine friend or foe, securing […]
Tag Archives | schizophrenia
FM Tones
Frequency Modulated (FM) stimuli consisted of simple sinusoidal frequency modulated (FM) tones generated in MATLAB with a one second duration. FM was calculated as follows: x(t)=Asin {2 π fc t + β sin(2 π fm t)} where x(t) is the pressure variation over time t, A is the peak amplitude( or pressure), fc is the […]
Vocal Burst
Prosody is an important part of social communication in which we use vocal cues to determine the emotion in a speaker’s voice. Here, we examine prosody in vocal bursts, or nonverbal utterances. This task uses stimuli adapted from Simon-Thomas et al. (2009). Subjects listen to each stimulus and are asked to indicate how positive vs. […]
Prosody Task
Prosody is an important part of social communication in which we use vocal cues to determine the emotion in a speaker’s voice. This task, adapted from Juslin and Laukka (2001) uses semantically neutral sentences spoken with either anger, happiness, fear, sadness, or ne expression. Subjects are asked to indicate which emotion the speaker was conveying […]
Phonological Awareness
This task examines phoneme perception and is adapted from Goswami, Gerson, and Astruc (2009). Subjects hear three words and are asked to indicate which one sounded different from the other two. Items are divided between sparse and dense dependent upon neighborhood density, or how interconnected a word is with other words in terms of sound […]
Shahin Task
This task examines phoneme perception and is adapted from Carpenter and Shahin (2013). It is currently being piloted with collaborator Dr. Georgia Zellou. Subjects hear a sound and must decide whether it sounded like a /ba/, /wa/, or neither. This task has recently been expanded to include stimuli using /ga/ or /ya/ phonemes. Stimuli include […]
AE/FT Tasks
These tasks are auditory tasks that measure phoneme perception with manipulated amplitude envelopes (top) or formant trajectories (bottom) between sounds and was adapted from Goswami et al. (2011). Subjects hear 3 stimuli and must decide which sound was different from the others. Stimuli difference for both tasks begins at 195 ms and changes adaptively based […]
Roving Intensity
This task is an auditory task designed to measure roving intensity perception and was also adapted from Goswami et al. (2011). Subjects hear 2 stimuli and are asked to indicate which had a softer rise. Stimulus onset difference (i.e. time it takes for stimulus to reach full intensity) begins at 278 ms and changes adaptively […]
Intensity
This is a basic auditory task designed to measure sound intensity that was adapted from Goswami et al. (2011). Subjects hear 2 stimuli and are asked to indicate which one was softer than the other. Stimuli difference begins at 13.8dB from standard stimulus and changes adaptively based on subject performance, to a maximum of 19.5 […]
Distorted Tunes
The distorted tunes task is an auditory task designed to measure pitch perception (Drayna et al., 2001). Subjects hear short clips of tonal melodies and are asked to indicate whether the tune sounded correctly or incorrectly, with wrong notes in them, and whether or not the tune was familiar to them. Stimuli include tonal representations […]
Tone Matching Task
The tone matching task is designed to measure pitch perception. Subjects are presented with pairs of 100 ms tones with 500 ms inter-tone intervals and are asked to indicate whether they sounded the same or different. In order to minimize learning effects, 3 different base tones are used: 500, 1000, or 2000 Hz. Half the […]
Rhythm
The rhythm task is an auditory task designed to measure rhythmic perception (Foxton et al., 2006). Subject hears 2 5-note rhythms and is asked to indicate which has an extra gap. The monotonic version (top) uses 1000 Hz tones, while the polytonic version (bottom) presents tones in random pitches from an octave divided into 7 […]
Causality
This task was designed by Woods et al. (2014). Based on the Shallice (1964) launching experiment, this task measures time dependence in perceiving causation. Subjects view a short video which consists of a blue ball moving toward a red ball, which then moves after a period of 0-267.2 ms, divided in 16.7 ms intervals, creating […]
Timing Tasks
These tasks measure time perception using either visual (Vis100 – top) or auditory perception (Aud100 – middle). For the visual task, two squares appear on the screen in succession. Subjects are asked to indicate which stimulus was shorter. One stimulus is always 6 frames (96 ms), while the other ranges from 7-38 frames (112-608 ms). The same […]
Simultaneity
This task also measures basic visual time perception. This task uses the same parameters as the Vis100 task. However, rather than appear in succession, the stimuli appear simultaneously. One square appears 7-38 frames earlier than the other. Subjects are asked to indicate which stimulus appeared first. Total Items: 39 Completion Time: 8 minutes Dependent Variable: Number […]
Weintraub Sentence Discrimination
This task is not currently in use. Developed from Weintraub, Masulam, and Kramer (1981), it was designed to measure prosody perception. Subjects listen to a pair of sentences are asked to decide whether or not the sentences were spoken in the same or different manner. Sentences were semantically neural (e.g. “Jack climbed the mountain.”) Seventeen […]
Sarcasm
This task is not currently in use. It was developed by Orbelo et al. (2005) as an attitudinal subtest of the Aprosodia Battery. It consists of 20 sentences recorder by both male and female speakers in either a sincere or sarcastic manner. Sentences were semantically neural (e.g. “This looks like a safe boat.”) Subjects were […]
Time Perception Antecedents for Linguistic and Social Cognitive Dysfunction
Basic Research Questions 1. To what extent does auditory time perception contribute to phonemic differentiation and prosodic recognition in healthy individuals? 2. How do impairments in time perception affect phonemic differentiation and prosodic recognition in schizophrenia? Language and social cognitive impairment figure prominently in schizophrenia psychopathology and are linked to both positive as well as […]
Abstracting Emotions Using Frequency Modulated Tones
Basic Research Questions 1. Are carrier frequency and modulation depth cues sufficient enough to convey prosodic intent? 2. Can this acoustic space be mapped in order to determine the existence regions of basic emotions? 3. To what degree do responses to these tones reflect the use of pitch in actual prosodic processing? Affective communication through […]
Loneliness, Social Connectedness, and Isolation
Basic Research Questions 1. Do individuals with schizophrenia have intact motivation to interact with others? 2. How does social communication relate to loneliness, desire for social connectedness, and actual isolation in both a healthy population and in schizophrenia? 3. How do these measures relate to clinical outcome? Humans have evolved highly complex social cognitive and […]
Rhythm and Amusia in Schizophrenia
Basic Research Questions 1. Do schizophrenia patients’ rhythmic performances vary in the presence of tonal changes within rhythmic sequences? 2. Would such rhythmic performance variations themselves vary by the subjects’ pitch perception acuity? 3. Does rhythmic performance contribute to schizophrenia dysprosodia? Perceiving social intent via vocal intonation (prosody) is profoundly impaired in schizophrenia. Recent studies […]
Prosody-Centric Neuropsychological Connectome
Basic Research Questions 1. How do deficits in auditory and language abilities relate to prosody perception across different diagnoses? 2. Which neuropathic mechanisms impair prosodic perception in schizophrenia and how are these different from other diagnoses? 3. What are the optimal targets for treatment interventions to improve social communication impairments? Dysprodia, which is impairment in […]
Conversation and Collaboration
Basic Research Questions: 1. How do individuals with schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorders establish joint attention with another individual to achieve a common goal? 2. How do these individuals form common conceptual ground? 3. Further, how do turn taking dynamics differ during conversation? Moment-by-moment coordination among conversational partners is necessary because for each utterance, […]
