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At some point in our evolutionary history, humans lost vocal membranes and air sacs, representing an unexpected simplification of the vocal apparatus relative to other great apes. One hypothesis is that these simplifications represent anatomical adaptations for speech because a simpler larynx provides a suitably stable and tonal vocal source with fewer nonlinear vocal phenomena (NLP). The key assu
Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) are acoustic irregularities that are widespread in animal and human vocal repertoires, as well as in music. These phenomena have recently attracted considerable interest but, surprisingly, have never been the subject of a comprehensive review. NLP result from irregular sound production, contribute to perceptual harshness, and have long been considered nonadaptive vocal fe
When applied to vertebrate vocalizations, source-filter theory, initially developed for human speech, has revolutionized our understanding of animal communication, resulting in major insights into the form and function of animal sounds. However, animal calls and human nonverbal vocalizations can differ qualitatively from human speech, often having more chaotic and higher-frequency sources, making
Formants (vocal tract resonances) are increasingly analyzed not only by phoneticians in speech but also by behavioral scientists studying diverse phenomena such as acoustic size exaggeration and articulatory abilities of non-human animals. This often involves estimating vocal tract length acoustically and producing scale-invariant representations of formant patterns. We present a theoretical frame
Many primates produce copulation calls, but we have surprisingly little data on what human sex sounds like. I present 34 h of audio recordings from 2239 authentic sexual episodes shared online. These include partnered sex or masturbation, but each recording has only one main vocalizer (1950 female, 289 male). Both acoustic features and arousal ratings from an online perceptual experiment with 109
Across many species, a major function of vocal communication is to convey formidability, with low voice frequencies traditionally considered the main vehicle for projecting large size and aggression. Vocal loudness is often ignored, yet it might explain some puzzling exceptions to this frequency code. Here we demonstrate, through acoustic analyses of over 3,000 human vocalizations and four percept
Cat purring, the unusual, pulsed vibration that epitomizes comfort, enjoys a special status in the world of vocal communication research. Indeed, it has long been flagged as a rare exception to the dominant theory of voice production in mammals. A new study presents histological and biomechanical evidence that purring can occur passively, without needing muscle vibration in the larynx controlled b
Severe obesity during childhood is associated with cognitive deficits. Studies in adults have suggested improvements in executive functioning and memory after bariatric surgery. Our aim was to explore changes in cognitive function in adolescents over two years after bariatric surgery or intensive non-surgical treatment. Methods: The Adolescent Morbid Obesity Surgery 2 (AMOS2) is a multicentre, ope
The detrimental effect of a lengthy summer vacation on important scholastic abilities such as reading, writing and mathematical skills is relatively well documented, but how language skills are affected by summer vacation is less investigated. The purpose of our study is to investigate how lexical organization and retrieval assessed by a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task and oral narrative abilit
Relational memory retrieval entails a dynamic interplay between eye movements and neural activity, yet the temporal coordination of these processes remains unclear. We examined how theta- and alpha-band EEG activity relates to sequential fixations during relational memory retrieval. Participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice associative memory task while eye movements and EEG were reco
The study discussed in this article aimed to understanding how pre-activity formulations are designed and accomplished by mothers in play interactions as everyday interactional business. Here, we report specifically on instances during the lab-based interactions where the mother orients to the lab-based task of singing with their infant, and discuss potential implications of such participant orien
Historically, research on nonavian reptile communication has emphasized visual, tactile, and chemical modalities. Recently, growing evidence highlights the significance of acoustic signals in intra- and interspecies interactions. Reptiles produce sounds to mediate social behaviors such as reproduction, parent–offspring interactions, and territorial defense. Many species were found to have diverse
Word accents are restricted by a word’s morphological structure but also distinguish lexical meanings in minimal pairs. We investigated how early tonal information carried by morphophonemic word accents influences rapid lexical access in native speakers. We also asked whether tone-bearing words are decomposed into morphemes and word accents, or retrieved holistically via full-form neural represent
Aim: Students with hearing loss (HL) often fall behind hearing peers in complex language tasks such as narrative writing. This study explored the effects of school grade, gender, cognitive and linguistic predisposition and audiological factors on narrative text quality in this target group.Method: Eleven students with HL in Grades 5–6 and 7–8 (age 12–15) who took part in a writing intervention wro
The present study reports on the development of a questionnaire that evaluates children's experiences of their physical classroom environment, activities and interactions. It also explores the psychometric properties of the questionnaire and how acoustical characteristics of the classroom, class size and student characteristics (age, sex and Swedish as a second language) influence the self-reporte
Bilingual children are at a disadvantage when compared to monolingual norms in language assessment. Monolingual assessment fails to acknowledge the asymmetrically distributed linguistic competence of bilingual children, for example, different levels of mastery of family and school related concepts in the first and second languages, respectively. Consequently, monolingual assessment results in an o
Observational learning is a successful method for improving writing skills in various genres. We explore effects of a five lesson intervention series based on peer observation. Fifty-five Swedish 5th-grade students aged 10-12 years followed this intervention program. The language and reading comprehension and working memory capacity were tested. The students watched short film-clips with peers wor
Despite medical, technical, and pedagogical advances, the risk for language impairment is still much higher in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children than in hearing peers. Research on linguistic, cognitive, and communicative development in DHH children has found a range of basic spoken language deficits. Twenty percent to 50% of deaf children still meet criteria for language impairment. Tests of
