Individual differences in temporal predictions in speech: word segmentation and conversational turn-taking

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When processing speech, listeners use a variety of cues,including speech rate, to make predictions about upcominglinguistic content. How such predictions are made is likely tobe influenced by factors that vary between listeners, however:specifically, individual differences in working memory,attention, and general prosodic processing may all beassociated with variation in the use of linguistic predictions.A three-part study will test whether individual cognitive factorsaffect listeners' ability to track speech rate and, if so, whethercertain listeners are better at using timing cues to predict bothupcoming word boundaries and conversational turn-taking.Experiment 1 will test for associations between listeners'attention, working memory and prosodic processing and theirability to track speech rate by means of a finger-tapping task.Experiment 2 will investigate whether these individualvariations influence listeners' ability to predict upcoming wordboundaries (by finding a target probe in a string of nonsensesyllables) or interlocutors' turn-taking (by button pressing assoon as a turn transition is detected in recorded conversation).Experiment 3 will adapt tasks used in the second experiment,with the addition of background noise, to identify whetherindividual differences predict real-world listening performance.We expect that individual difference in cognition and prosodicprocessing will affect listeners' ability to track speech rate andthus to make predictions that enhance perception andunderstanding of speech. These findings will point to means ofsupport for speech-based interactions in infants with disordersof language development or in adults with acquiredneurolinguistics impairments.