The goal of the current study was to compare the quality of esophageal speech and voice to videofluoroscopic features of the esophagus and pharyngoesophageal (PE) segment. The speech and voice characteristics of 30 laryngectomized patients were rated by 5 speech-language pathologists. Based on these ratings, patients were divided into 3 categories: fluent (n = 9), moderately fluent (n = 10) and...

Sentence processing is an extraordinarily complex and speeded process, and yet proceeds, typically, in an effortless manner. What makes us so fluent in language? Incremental models of sentence processing propose that speakers continuously build expectations for upcoming linguistic material based on partial information available at each relevant time point. In addition, statistical analyses of c...

An "additive" fluent is a fluent with numerical values such that the effect of several concurrently executed actions on it can be computed by adding the effects of the individual actions. We show how queries about additive fluents can be answered using the Causal Calculator. The examples discussed in this paper involve buying and selling, applying forces and moving groups of objects. The additi...

BACKGROUND The UK South Asian population has poorer health outcomes. Little is known about their process of care in general practice, or in particular the process of communication with GPs. AIM To compare the ways in which white and South Asian patients communicate with white GPs. DESIGN OF STUDY Observational study of video-recorded consultations using the Roter Interactional Analysis Syst...

We investigate the problems of precondition interactions and eeect cumulations, typically caused by the concurrent execution of actions. Our analysis leads to an integration of property oriented and resource oriented approaches to the representation of action and change. We formalize our ideas by introducing an extension AORC of the Action Description Language AC 2]. In order to enable sound an...

The human brain readily perceives fluent movement from static input. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated brain mechanisms that mediate fluent apparent biological motion (ABM) perception from sequences of body postures. We presented body and nonbody stimuli varying in objective sequence duration and fluency of apparent movement. Three body postures were ordered to produc...