Search Results (67)

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to translate the Foot Function Index Revised Short Form (FFI RSF-Sp) into Spanish, perform a transcultural adaptation, and validate the resulting questionnaire on foot and ankle function. The revised instrument, derived from the original version of the FFI, incorporates additional subscales on ankle stiffness and overall quality of life that help produce a more comprehensive assessment and overcome some limitations. Methods: The final sample consisted of 306 participants from Malaga and Seville (Spain), all aged over 18 years and native Spanish speakers. These participants also completed the FAAM-Sp and VASFA-Sp validated questionnaires. The measurement properties of FFI RSF-Sp were evaluated in accordance with the Consensus-Based Standards for the Selection of Health Status Measurements Instruments (COSMIN) recommendations. Results: Factor analysis confirmed the existence of a five-factor structure, explaining 67.6% of the total variance, with an RMSEA of 0.0785 and a Tucker–Lewis index of 0.874. Internal consistency was excellent, with an overall Cronbach’s alpha of 0.963 and subscale values ranging from 0.776 to 0.886. Furthermore, moderate to strong correlations were obtained with the VASFA-Sp (r = −0.651) and FAAM ADL (r = −0.737, p < 0.001), and the obtained area under the curve value was 0.806 (p < 0.001), confirming the discriminatory capacity of the instrument. Conclusions: The FFI RSF-Sp is a valid, reliable, and sensitive instrument for assessing foot and ankle function in a Spanish-speaking population. The incorporation of additional dimensions improves the understanding of dysfunction, and the robust psychometric indicators of this questionnaire make it appropriate for use in clinical and research settings, facilitating the detection of functional alterations and enhancing treatment follow up. Full article

Previous studies have found that second language learners can acquire sociolinguistic variation. However, there is a lack of studies that examine the L2 acquisition of second-person singular forms of address (2PS) in Spanish, especially in the immersion context of study abroad. The current study examines the acquisition of Spanish 2PS by seven adults learning Spanish in Medellin, Colombia. Participants completed an oral discourse completion task and a matched guise task to measure language perceptions toward each 2PS. Learners’ results are compared to findings from 38 native Spanish speakers from Medellin. Learners produced very few instances of the local variant vos and overproduced tú, differing greatly from native speakers. Two factors were found to significantly condition 2PS usage for learners: speaker gender and interlocutor relationship. Findings show that although learners perceive vos to a somewhat native-like extent and the role that it plays in the local variety, learners do not actually use it. Full article

This study investigates how sociolinguistically informed instruction and virtual exchanges affect the use of the second-person singular pronouns (usted, tú, and vos) by adult second language learners of Spanish enrolled in a third-semester course at a four-year college. The results from written contextualized tasks and oral discourse completion tasks show that participants who engaged in virtual exchanges with native speakers from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (experimental group) significantly improved their use of vos compared to those who did not participate in these exchanges (control group). Both groups increased their use of tú and vos over time, with notable differences between written and oral tasks. These findings provide empirical support for incorporating virtual exchanges into language learning curricula, demonstrating their effectiveness in teaching regional dialectal features such as voseo. Additionally, by focusing on the often-overlooked regionally variable pronoun vos, this study enriches the existing literature on Spanish language instruction and opens new avenues for research on dialectal variation and sociolinguistically informed pedagogy. Full article

It is well known that a listener’s native phonological background has an impact on how speech sounds are perceived. Native speakers can distinguish sounds that serve a contrastive function in their language better than sounds that are not contrastive. However, the role of allophony in speech perception is understudied, especially among heritage speakers. This paper highlights a study that directly tests the influence of the allophonic/phonemic distinction on perception by Spanish heritage speakers, comparing their results to those of late bilingual and monolingual speakers of Spanish and English in the US. Building on an earlier study, the unique contribution of this paper is a study of the perceptual pattern shown by heritage speakers of Spanish and a comparison of bilingual and monolingual speakers of English and Spanish. The participants completed a similarity rating task with stimuli containing VCV sequences with the intervocalic consonants [d], [ð], and [ɾ]. The heritage speakers, who are early sequential bilinguals of Spanish and English, showed a perceptual pattern that is more like monolingual Spanish listeners than monolingual English listeners, but still intermediate between the two monolingual groups. Specifically, they perceived [d]/[ɾ] like the L1 Spanish participants, treating them as very different sounds. They perceived the pair [d]/[ð], which is contrastive in English but allophonic in Spanish, like the L1 Spanish participants, as fairly similar sounds. Finally, heritage speakers perceived [ɾ]/[ð], contrastive in both languages, as very different sounds, identical to all other participant groups. The results underscore both the importance of surface oppositions, suggesting the need to reconsider the traditional definition of contrast, as well as the importance of considering level and age of exposure to the second language when studying the perception of sounds by bilingual speakers. Full article

This study examines the perception of insult-related vocabulary in Spanish among native speakers (L1) and Polish learners of Spanish as a foreign language (L2). Insults are analyzed as versatile speech acts fulfilling pragmatic functions such as impoliteness, affiliation, and emphasis. Adopting a contrastive approach, this research evaluates perceptions of colloquialism and emotional intensity across three groups: learners without prior stays in Spanish-speaking countries, learners with prior stays, and L1 speakers. Data were collected through surveys assessing knowledge, recognition, and perception of selected insults related to intellect and sexuality. The findings reveal that insults associated with sexuality exhibit the highest perceived offensive load across all groups, while those linked to behavior and intellect are rated as less aggressive. Polish learners of Spanish, particularly those without cultural immersion, tend to overestimate the offensiveness of insults compared to L1 speakers. However, learners with prior stays align more closely with L1 perceptions, underscoring the impact of cultural exposure. The results highlight the pivotal role of context and interlanguage in shaping learners’ interpretations of offensive vocabulary. They also establish a foundation for further exploration into the acquisition and pragmatic use of colloquial and emotionally charged language in L2 learning. Full article

Linguistic tasks such as Part-of-Speech (PoS) tagging can be tedious, but are crucial for the development of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. Games With A Purpose (GWAPs) aim to reduce the monotony of the task for native speakers and non-experts who contribute to crowdsourcing projects. This study focuses on revising and correcting PoS tags in the Corpus Oral y Sonoro del Español Rural (COSER), the largest collection of oral data in the Spanish-speaking world, to create a parsed corpus of European Spanish dialects. It also examines how game design elements (GDEs) affect players’ enjoyment. Three games—Agentes, Tesoros, and Anotatlón—were developed, incorporating different GDEs, such as rewards and challenges. The results show two levels of enjoyment: at the concept level with Anotatlón, and at the level of individual GDEs with Tesoros. This suggests that certain GDEs influence player enjoyment and, consequently, their preference for certain games. However, the study also shows the complexity of evaluating triggers for player enjoyment in games with more than one implemented GDE. Full article

The present paper investigates the link between perception and production in the laryngeal phonology of multilingual speakers, focusing on non-contrastive segments and the dynamic aspect of these processes. Fourteen L1 Hungarian, L2 English, and L3 Spanish advanced learners took part in the experiments. The production experiments examined the aspiration of voiceless stops in word-initial position, regressive voicing assimilation, and pre-sonorant voicing; the latter two processes were analyzed both word-internally and across word boundaries. The perception experiments aimed to find out whether learners notice the phonetic outputs of these processes and regard them as linguistically relevant. Our results showed that perception and production are not aligned. Accurate production is dependent on accurate perception, but accurate perception is not necessarily transferred into production. In laryngeal postlexical processes, the native language seems to play the primary role even for highly competent learners, but markedness might be relevant too. The novel findings of this study are that phonetic category formation seems to be easier than the acquisition of dynamic allophonic alternations and that metaphonological awareness is correlated with perception but not with production. Full article

This study investigates clitic use in adult heritage speakers (HL speakers) of Spanish, with French as their dominant language. We conducted an exploratory case study using spontaneous production data from HL speakers of Spanish and first-generation Spanish immigrants living in Montreal, Canada. Data were collected through two guided production tasks, one oral and one written, to account for task-induced performance variations. Our analysis focused on clitic production, omission, function, optionality, and grammaticality. The findings reveal both similarities and differences compared to monolingual native Spanish speakers, highlighting a broad range of clitic structures produced by all participants and a potential tendency among HL speakers to favour fixed choices in optional structures. This study provides valuable insights into the production patterns of clitics in adult HL speakers of Spanish with French as their dominant language, contributing to our understanding of bilingual grammar. Full article

Humans segment speech naturally based on the transitional probabilities between linguistic elements. For bilingual speakers navigating between a first (L1) and a second language (L2), L1 knowledge can influence their perception, leading to transfer effects based on phonological similarities or differences. Specifically, in Spanish, resyllabification occurs when consonants at the end of a syllable or word boundary are repositioned as the onset of the subsequent syllable. While the process can lead to ambiguities in perception, current academic discussions debate the duration of canonical and resyllabified productions. However, the role of bilingualism in the visual perception of syllable and word segmentation remains unknown to date. The present study explores the use of bilingual skills in the perception of articulatory movements and visual cues in speech perception, addressing the gap in the literature regarding the visibility of syllable pauses in lipreading. The participants in this study, 80 native Spanish speakers and 195 L2 learners, were subjected to audio, visual-only, and audiovisual conditions to assess their segmentation accuracy. The results indicated that both groups could segment speech effectively, with audiovisual cues providing the most significant benefit. Native speakers performed more consistently, while proficiency influenced L2 learners’ accuracy. The results show that aural syllabic segmentation is acquired at early stages of proficiency, while visual syllabic segmentation is acquired at higher levels of proficiency. Full article

Objective: This study investigated the degrees of lenition, or consonantal weakening, in the production of Spanish stop consonants by native English speakers during a study abroad (SA) program. Lenition is a key phonological process in Spanish, where voiced stops (/b/, /d/, /ɡ/) typically weaken to fricatives or approximants in specific phonetic environments. For L2 learners, mastering this subtle process is essential for achieving native-like pronunciation. Methods: To assess the learners’ progress in acquiring lenition, we employed Phonet, a deep learning model. Unlike traditional quantitative acoustic methods that focus on measuring the physical properties of speech sounds, Phonet utilizes recurrent neural networks to predict the posterior probabilities of phonological features, particularly sonorant and continuant characteristics, which are central to the lenition process. Results: The results indicated that while learners showed progress in producing the fricative-like variants of lenition during the SA program and understood how to produce lenition in appropriate contexts, the retention of these phonological gains was not sustained after their return. Additionally, unlike native speakers, the learners never fully achieved the approximant-like realization of lenition. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for sustained exposure and practice beyond the SA experience to ensure the long-term retention of L2 phonological patterns. While SA programs offer valuable opportunities for enhancing L2 pronunciation, they should be supplemented with ongoing support to consolidate and extend the gains achieved during the immersive experience. Full article

Nutrition screening tools may facilitate early nutrition interventions specifically with Hispanic populations that are already at higher risk. There is a paucity of culturally competent and validated nutrition screening tools for 3–5-year-old Hispanic children. The purpose of this study was to develop a Spanish nutrition screening tool for 3–5-year-old children to be used by Spanish-speaking parents in community settings to appropriately address malnutrition risk factors with cultural sensitivity. All phases of the study were conducted in Spanish with native Spanish speakers. Face and content validity were established using focus groups, expert reviews, and pilot testing of the tool with Spanish-speaking parents. Parents of children 3–5 years old whose primary language was Spanish (n = 39) completed the nutrition screening, and a nutritionist completed an in-depth nutrition assessment of these children. Criterion validity was measured by comparing the results of the nutrition screening tool with the in-depth nutrition assessment. The nutrition screening tool had a sensitivity of 91.67% and a specificity of 81.48%. The negative predictive value was 69%, and the positive predictive value was 96%. The nutrition screening tool may be used to identify malnutrition in Hispanic children and needs further validation in larger samples. Full article

Research on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and misinformation endorsement among Spanish-speaking Americans is limited. This cross-sectional study used a Spanish-language survey from May–August 2021 among 483 Spanish speakers living in the US and Puerto Rico. We applied multivariable Poisson regression with robust error variances to assess the association between independent variables and binary outcomes for vaccine acceptance versus hesitance, as well as misinformation endorsement. Vaccine acceptance was associated with COVID-19 risk perception score (PR = 1.7 high vs. low perceived risk), opinion of government transparency (PR = 2.2 very transparent vs. not transparent), and trust in vaccine information (PR = 1.8 high vs. low). There was also an interaction between time spent on social media and social media as a main source of COVID-19 information (p = 0.0484). Misinformation endorsement was associated with opinion about government transparency (PR = 0.5 moderately vs. not transparent), trust in vaccine information (PR = 0.5 high vs. low trust), social media impact on vaccine confidence (PR = 2.1 decreased vs. increased confidence), distrust vaccines (PR = 1.9 distrust vs. trust), using vaccine information from Facebook (PR = 1.4 yes vs. no), and time spent on social media by those using social media as main source of COVID-19 vaccine information (p = 0.0120). Vaccine acceptance in respondents with high misinformation endorsement scores was 0.7 times those with low scores. These findings highlight the importance of effective information dissemination, the positive role of social media, and government transparency in boosting vaccine uptake among Spanish speakers in the US. Full article

Phonetic category compactness pertains to the degree of variation or dispersion within a specific category. Previous research has shown that more compact native (L1) categories in production have been related to the discrimination of non-native sounds in perception and production. The understanding of the factors influencing L1 category compactness remains limited. Some proposals suggest that compactness may be influenced by individual differences in cognitive processes. Alternatively, category compactness could be linked to linguistic factors, such as the number of languages spoken or the density of the phonological system. This study investigates the latter hypothesis. This study examined category compactness in perception for three L1 Spanish vowels /i/, /e/, and /a/ across four participant groups: 12 monolinguals, 31 functional monolinguals, 24 bilinguals, and 19 multilinguals. To measure compactness in perception, the study employed a perceptual categorization task consisting of synthesized variants of /i/, /e/, and /a/. Participants were asked to label these variants as either acceptable or unacceptable members of their L1 /i/, /e/, and /a/ categories. The findings revealed significant differences in category compactness between monolingual and bi/multilingual speakers. More specifically, bilingual and multilingual speakers had larger/less compact L1 vowel categories than monolinguals. The substantial variability in compactness across all groups suggests that compactness may be influenced by a range of other individual differences, besides the number of languages spoken. Full article

Tautosyllabic segment sequences exhibit greater gestural overlap than heterosyllabic ones. In Spanish, it is presumed that word-final consonants followed by a word-initial vowel undergo resyllabification, and generative phonology assumes that canonical CV.CV# and derived CV.C#V onsets are structurally identical. However, recent studies have not found evidence of this structural similarity in the acoustics. The current goal is to investigate anticipatory and carryover vowel nasalization patterns in tautosyllabic, heterosyllabic, and resyllabified segment sequences in Spanish. Nine native speakers of Peninsular Spanish participated in a read-aloud task. Nasal airflow data were extracted using pressure transducers connected to a vented mask. Each participant produced forty target tokens with CV.CV# (control), CVN# (tautosyllabic), CV.NV# (heterosyllabic), and CV.N#V (resyllabification) structures. Forty timepoints were obtained from each vowel to observe airflow dynamics, resulting in a total of 25,200 datapoints analyzed. Regarding anticipatory vowel nasalization, the CVN# sequence shows an earlier onset of nasalization, while CV.NV# and CV.N#V sequences illustrate parallel patterns among them. Carryover vowel nasalization exhibited greater nasal spreading than anticipatory nasalization, and vowels in CV.NV# and CV.N#V structures showed symmetrical nasalization patterns. These results imply that syllable structure affects nasal gestural overlap and that aerodynamic characteristics of vowels are unaffected across word boundaries. Full article

This article provides a detailed examination of voice quality in word-final vowels in Spanish. The experimental task involved the pronunciation of words in two prosodic contexts by native Spanish speakers from diverse dialects. A total of 400 vowels (10 participants × 10 words × 2 contexts × 2 repetitions) were analyzed acoustically in Praat. Waveforms and spectrograms were inspected visually for voice, creak, breathy voice, and devoicing cues. In addition, the relative amplitude difference between the first two harmonics (H1–H2) was obtained via FFT spectra. The findings reveal that while creaky voice is pervasive, breathy voice is also common, and devoicing occurs in 11% of tokens. We identify multiple phonation types (up to three) within the same vowel, of which modal voice followed by breathy voice was the most common combination. While creaky voice was more frequent overall for males, modal voice tended to be more common in females. In addition, creaky voice was significantly more common at the end of higher prosodic constituents. The analysis of spectral tilt shows that H1–H2 clearly distinguishes breathy voice from modal voice in both males and females, while H1–H2 values consistently discriminate creaky and modal voice in male participants only. Full article