Doctoral Dissertation Research: Socially guided allocation of attention and the memory encoding of spoken language

理解口语的一部分涉及到记忆的储存。这些记忆是一个系统的核心部分，使人类能够像他们一样快速熟练地理解语言。例如，当听者听到一个句子时，他们可以根据句子的发音方式（如情绪、情绪等）来理解其含义和说话者。过去经历的记忆会引导个体推断出这些含义。但人类不可能用同样的细节存储每一段记忆。有些经历会被清楚地记住，而另一些则会被遗忘，而另一些则会被合并或只存储一部分。一个悬而未决的问题是，这些记忆差异是如何产生的。最近的研究表明，记忆编码依赖于说话者和群体，并与通过口语暗示的社会特征密切相关。在这个项目中，研究人员调查了口头语言记忆差异的心理基础。了解不同说话者的认知过程是如何变化的，对理论和社会都很重要。例如，在法律系统中，这项工作涉及证人对言语记忆的可靠性。在医学上，准确的诊断依赖于医生和病人之间的对话。而且，在开发新的人工智能技术时，研究人员需要了解这些过程是如何在人类身上起作用的，以避免在机器上重现偏见。这个博士论文项目测试了一个假设，即听者在不同的语境中对演讲的关注不同，这导致了记忆的差异。听者越多，记忆就越牢固。人们普遍认为，言语记忆的强度主要取决于听者听到一个单词或发音的频率，但这种方法与这种观点有所不同。研究人员提出了一个模型，在这个模型中，听者的注意力水平是中心的，并受到说话者的社会特征和讲话的背景的调节。本文检验了三个主要假设。首先，语音识别和记忆编码依赖于听者基于说话人的声音而产生的联想和信念。其次，这个过程是由听者的注意力驱动的，而不仅仅是一个发音被听到的频率。第三，吸引注意力的语言特征并不总是相同的。相反，它们取决于上下文。对于每个假设，研究人员进行了两个相应的实验：一个实验专注于对语音的记忆，另一个实验专注于对句子意义的记忆。实验结果揭示了人类是如何理解和记忆语言的，以及这些过程是如何与社会世界相互作用的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Part of understanding spoken language involves storing memories of speech. These memories are a central part of a system that allows humans to understand language as quickly and adeptly as they do. For example, when a listener hears a sentence, they can understand something about the meaning and the talker depending on how the sentence is spoken (e.g., mood, emotion, etc.). Memories from past experiences lead individuals to infer these meanings. But humans cannot store every memory with the same detail. Some experiences are remembered clearly while others are forgotten, while others are merged or only stored in part. One open question is how these differences in memory emerge. Recent research has shown that memory encoding is talker- and group-dependent and strongly associated with social traits cued through spoken language. In this project, the researchers investigate the psychological underpinnings of differences in memories for spoken language. Understanding how cognitive processes vary across diverse talkers is important for theory and for society. For example, in the legal system, this work relates to the reliability of witnesses’ memory of speech. In medicine, accurate diagnoses rely on conversations between the doctor and the patient. And, in developing new AI technologies, researchers need to understand how these processes work in humans in order to avoid recreating biases in machines. This doctoral dissertation project tests the hypothesis that listeners attend differently to speech in different contexts, and this results in differences in memory. When the listener attends more, the memory is recorded more strongly. This approach diverges from a broad expectation that the strength of memories for speech is mostly determined by how often listeners hear a word or pronunciation. The researchers propose a model in which listeners’ level of attention is central and is mediated by the social traits of the speaker and the context of the speech. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, speech recognition and memory encoding depend on associations and beliefs listeners have about speakers based on their voices. Second, this process is driven by the listener’s attention, not just how often a pronunciation has been heard. Third, the traits of speech that attract attention are not always the same. Instead, they depend on the context. For each hypothesis, the researchers conduct two corresponding experiments: One experiment focusing on memory for the sounds of speech, and the other focusing on memory for the meanings of sentences. The results of the experiments shed light on how humans understand and remember speech and how these processes interact with a social world.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.