Individuals with grapheme-color synesthesia experience idiosyncratic colors when viewing achromatic letters or digits. Despite large individual differences in grapheme-color association, synesthetes tend to associate graphemes sharing a perceptual feature with similar synesthetic colors. Sound has been suggested as one such feature. In the present study, we investigated whether graphemes of which representative phonemes have similar phonetic features tend to be associated with analogous synesthetic colors. We tested five Korean multilingual synesthetes on a color-matching task using graphemes from Korean, English, and Japanese orthography. We then compared the similarity of synesthetic colors induced by those characters sharing a phonetic feature. Results showed that graphemes associated with the same phonetic feature tend to induce synesthetic color in both within- and cross-script analyses. Moreover, this tendency was consistent for graphemes that are not transliterable into each other as well as graphemes that are. These results suggest that it is the perceptual—i.e., phonetic—properties associated with graphemes, not just conceptual associations such as transliteration, that determine synesthetic color.
With the present study I investigated the sources of score variance and dependability in a local oral English proficiency test for potential international teaching assistants (ITAs) across four first language (L1) groups, and suggested alternative test designs. Using generalizability theory, I examined the relative importance of L1s (i.e., Indian, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish), examinees, tasks, and ratings to score variability, and estimated dependability across the L1s. The analyses identified examinees as the largest contributor, which is important for high dependability and validity arguments for test scores. Effects of ratings and tasks were small, but L1 effects on score variance were considerable, with the Indian group’s dependability lowest. Unlike previous generalizability theory studies on L1 effects, however, further analyses revealed that the L1 effects highly likely reflect proficiency differences rather than strong bias when comparing the percent agreement of the ratings, external criteria of examinee English proficiency, and underlying score distributions. I discuss the proficiency differences related to varied socio-linguistic contexts of using and learning English. Lastly, I suggest an alternative design with fewer items and one additional rating for improved dependability. Considering multiple test purposes specific to ITA testing (i.e., efficiency, construct representation, formative advantages), I propose a flexible approach.
is a suite of five English language proficiency tests developed by the British Council. The tests' broad purpose is to examine the English language proficiency of English as a second or foreign language users (ESL/EFL) on the scale of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (North, 2000); however, the selection of a variant (i.e., version) or skill component allows institutions to test targeted groups of language learners or different combinations of subskills.Aptis General is the most commonly selected variant, designed to test the general English language proficiency of candidates who are 16 years of age or older, and whose English language proficiency ranges from CEFR A1 to C1 (Assessment Research Group, 2016). Institutions may also select domain-specific or proficiency-specific variants: Aptis Advanced (targeted at CEFR B1 to C2), Aptis American (standard American English), Aptis for Teens (adapted for a core age group of 13-17 years in secondary
This study aimed to investigate the correlation between speaker's chronological age (CA) and perceived age (PA) and to specify the effect of pitch and speech rate as acoustic cue on judging age, using perceptual testing and acoustic analysis. Three tasks were conducted to identify the degree of listener's accuracy about age estimation. Three perception tasks were conducted to measure the accuracy of 80 Korean listeners when presented with different types of speech. In all the tasks, participants listened to speech samples and gave their estimate of the speaker's age in figures. It was found that Korean listeners are able to gauge the age of a speaker fairly precisely. CA and mean PA were positively correlated in all three tasks. It is clear that the amount and type of information included in the voice samples affected the accuracy of a listener's judgement. Moreover, the result revealed that listeners make use of acoustic information such as pitch and speech rate to estimate speaker's age.
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