The Effect of Alcohol on Speech Production (original) (raw)

Effects of alcohol on the speech of alcoholics

Journal of speech and hearing research, 1972

Speech disfluency resulting from alcohol intoxication was investigated in an experiment using established measures of nonfluency. Male alcoholic subjects (N --16) read a standardized passage into an audio recorder, once while sober and at two different degrees of intoxication. For each reading, the frequency of occurrence of 13 different operationally defined speech errors was scored. Subjects, when intoxicated, took a longer time to read the standardized passage; had increased interjections of words, phrases, and sounds; increased word omissions; increased word revisions; and increased broken suffixes at higher levels of intoxication (10 oz). Possible uses for a profile of disfluent speech of alcoholics are considered and suggestions for further investigations are discussed.

Effects of ethanol intoxication on speech suprasegmentals

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2001

The effects of ingesting ethanol have been shown to be somewhat variable in humans. To date, there appear to be but few universals. Yet, the question often arises: is it possible to determine if a person is intoxicated by observing them in some manner? A closely related question is: can speech be used for this purpose and, if so, can the degree of intoxication be determined? One of the many issues associated with these questions involves the relationships between a person's paralinguistic characteristics and the presence and level of inebriation. To this end, young, healthy speakers of both sexes were carefully selected and sorted into roughly equal groups of light, moderate, and heavy drinkers. They were asked to produce four types of utterances during a learning phase, when sober and at four strictly controlled levels of intoxication ͑three ascending and one descending͒. The primary motor speech measures employed were speaking fundamental frequency, speech intensity, speaking rate and nonfluencies. Several statistically significant changes were found for increasing intoxication; the primary ones included rises in F0, in task duration and for nonfluencies. Minor gender differences were found but they lacked statistical significance. So did the small differences among the drinking category subgroups and the subject groupings related to levels of perceived intoxication. Finally, although it may be concluded that certain changes in speech suprasegmentals will occur as a function of increasing intoxication, these patterns cannot be viewed as universal since a few subjects ͑about 20%͒ exhibited no ͑or negative͒ changes.

Language Use under the Influence of Alcohol

LANGUAGE CHANGE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL A group of friends hangs out together and has a couple of drinks – a scene occurring millions of times, every day, all over the world. But what is really happening there? When the friends talk about their problems, share stories and tell jokes, what language do they use and how does this language change? This paper is going to examine language change under the influence of alcohol among a group of seven to eight people between twenty and thirty who are all well known to each other. The results for this study are taken from a small self-compiled and transcribed corpus of naturally occurring English conversation of approximately three hours among native speakers of the German language, as well as questionnaires the testees will be asked to complete prior the field study, concerning their self-evaluation regarding their drinking habits and use of language. The author is going to concentrate on possible changes in the following areas: 1.) Terms of address and terms of endearment 2.) Swear words 3.) Sexual allusions Furthermore, the author is going to pay attention to the following research questions: a) Is pronunciation becoming more difficult for the testees? If yes, at what point and to what extent? Are there patterns of pronunciation difficulties within one speaker, e.g. with longer words or certain phonemes? Are there patterns of pronunciation difficulties within all testees, i.e. does a majority of the testees have the same difficulties? b) Are words and names getting confused? If yes, at what point and to what extent? PAPER OUTLINE 1. The Situation This section will outline the circumstantial details of the study. The motivation for the study will be explained, as well as the method and the situation from which the results were taken. Furthermore, a brief description of the testees will be given, containing at least sex and age. 2. Previous Knowledge Here we will hear about what has already been found out about language change under the influence of alcohol. Expecting fairly interesting results from the “field study”, it is advisable to know beforehand why alcohol works the way it does. Knowing about the neurological aspects will make us see the results in a different, more scientific light. 3. The Results 3.1. Change in Expressions This section deals with the change of “what” and not of “how”; i.e. if the testees use other words after a considerable consumption of alcohol. This would be easily identifiable in the change or increasing usage of terms of address and/or endearment, swear words as well as sexual allusions. 3.2. Change in Pronunciation The phenomenon of the so-called slurring is well-known – in this section it will be put under the microscope. The aim is not only to find out when the testees start to slur, but also if there are any patterns to be made out (see research questions above). 3.3. Change in Lexical Selection The possibility to mix up words increases with alcohol consumption. Also, since there are more than three people in the room, names might get confused. It will also be interesting to see if the testees notice their mistakes themselves; or if they do not notice them anymore after further consumption. 4. The Questionnaires Prior the “field study”, the testees will have filled in questionnaires (see introduction). The answers could show us whether the testees know themselves quite well or if they really have no idea how they change under the influence of alcohol. 5. Evaluation of the Study Next to a conclusion, this section will recall the method, the choice of research questions and the organization of the whole project. Possible limitations to the study will be outlined here, as well as new questions that could serve for future studies.

The Acoustic Consequences of Ethanol Consumption on Speech

The effect that alcohol consumption has on a decreased response of motor skill capabilities has been established widely in the literature. This effect can manifest itself as difficulty walking, blurred vision, slurred speech, and slowed reaction times, and can result in serious, many times fatal accidents. It is not uncommon to find an unwillingness to cooperate amongst those accused of hurting or killing others, or causing property damage as a result of their alcohol intoxication level, by denying the extent of their consumption, and/or refusing to allow law enforcement test the level of aclohol present in their blood, urine or breath at the moment of their arrest. While much attention, and widely accepted techniques to measure for level of intoxication have been developed and adopted on content in bodily fluids to be used in criminal proceedings, little has been done to incorporate other telltale signs of over-the-limit presence of alcohol in individuals. The brain’s motor centers involved in the muscles responsible for articulate movements in walking, for example, are very closely related to those commanding the articulators involved in speech. While this area of research is relatively new, there are several studies, such as Pisoni and Martin’s (1989), that have been conducted to find out the extent to which the speech events resulting of the influence of alcohol in articulating speech correctly can be identified. The purpose of this study is to analyze the role that alcohol consumption plays in the production of four articulatory measures, characteristic of speech affected by alcohol intoxication: Misarticulations, substitutions, omissions and repetitions. The effect of alcohol consumption on these measures will be tested by means of an ANOVA, in order to assess whether the presence of ethanol makes a significant difference in the rates of occurrence of these four parameters in comparing speech produced in a sober (0.0) and an intoxicated (0.12) state. Since many arrests are video recorded, especially in DWI cases, the evaluation of an individual’s intoxication level based on speech can be of substantial assistance to law enforcement in situations in which more invasive procedures, such as urine or blood tests, or the breathalyzer, cannot be used due to the unwillingness of the person under suspicion of being intoxicated to cooperate, a scenario commonly found during traffic stops.

Perceiving the Effects of Ethanol Intoxication on Voice

Journal of Voice, 2009

Many conditions operate to degrade the quality of the human voice. Alcohol intoxication is one of them. In this project, the objectives were to examine the ability of human listeners to accurately estimate both the presence and severity of intoxication from two types of speech samples. A review of available data suggests that, although listeners can often identify individuals who are intoxicated simply by hearing samples of their voice, they are less efficient at accurately determining the severity of this condition. A number of aural-perceptual studies were carried out to test these relationships. Populations of speakers, selected based on rigorous criteria, provided orally read and extemporaneous utterances when sober and at three highly controlled levels of intoxication. Listener groups of university students and professionals attempted to identify both the existence and specific level of intoxication present. It was found that these individuals were proficient in recognizing the presence of, and increases in, intoxication but were less accurate in gauging the specific levels. Several subordinate relationships were also investigated. In this regard, statistically significant differences were not found between male and female listeners or between professionals and lay listeners; however, they were found for different classes of speech. That is, it was shown that text difficulty correlated with severity of effect.

The influence of alcohol on L1 vs. L2 pronunciation

ICPhS, 2019

In this study, we investigated the influence of alcohol intake on pronunciation in both a native and a non-native language. At a Dutch music festival, we recorded the speech of 87 participants in Dutch (native language) and English (non-native language) when reading a few sentences in both languages. The recorded audio samples were judged by 108 sober native Dutch speakers in a perception experiment at the same festival. Participants were asked to judge how clear the Dutch pronunciations of a random selection of speakers were and how native-like the English pronunciations were. The results, analysed using generalized additive modelling (which is able to identify non-linear relationships), indicated a small linear negative relationship between alcohol intake and clarity of Dutch speech. For English there was no effect of alcohol intake on the native-likeness of the English pronunciations.

The Impact of Alcohol on L1 versus L2

Language and Speech, 2020

Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.

Speech processing ability in alcoholics: A transient impairment and its relation to field dependence

Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 1985

Alcoholic and non-alcoholic subjects received a test of the ability to identify speech presented against competing speech (Synthetic Sentence Identification) and a test of field dependence (Embedded-Figures Test (EFT). Performance on the speech task (which involved auditory figure-ground differentiation) bore no special relationship to performance on the fielddependence test. However, cross-sectional and longitudinal data suggested that recentlydrinking alcoholics are temporarily impaired in their speechprocessing ability, recovering this ability after several months of alcoholabstinence. A relationship between chronicity of alcoholism and field dependence was also observed. The latter relationship, along with findings on auditory tests, were discussed in terms of their relevance to the issue of whether field dependence is an antecedent to or a consequence of alcoholism.

IMPACT OF ALCOHOL ON L 1 VS . L 2 The Impact of Alcohol on L 1 vs . L 2

2020

Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a nonnative language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants’ blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect o...

Intoxication and pitch control in tonal and non-tonal language speakers

JASA Express Letters (vol. 2, iss. 6, 065202), 2022

Alcohol intoxication is known to affect pitch variability in non-tonal languages. In this study, intoxication's effects on pitch were examined in tonal and non-tonal language speakers, in both their native language (L1; German, Korean, Mandarin) and nonnative language (L2; English). Intoxication significantly increased pitch variability in the German group (in L1 and L2), but not in the Korean or Mandarin groups (in L1 or L2), although there were individual differences. These results support the view that pitch control is related to the functional load of pitch and is an aspect of speech production that can be advantageously transferred across languages, overriding the expected effects of alcohol.