Community interventions offer promise for reducing alcohol and drug use in young adulthood (age 18 to 29). This study aims to pilot three intervention components in three municipalities in Victoria, Australia participating in the Communities That Care process. The study methods include the following: (1) In 2017, a screening and brief intervention message campaign was disseminated using brochures and posters across youth serving organisations (e.g., surf shops) in the regional city of Warrnambool. A randomised waitlist trial evaluated pre- and post-campaign effects on staff (15 organisations, 30 staff) confidence and screening and brief intervention behaviour. (2) From 2017 to 2019, brochures and posters were revised from Intervention 1 and scaled up through 102 organisations and an online campaign in the municipalities of Warrnambool, Geelong, and Cardinia. (3) Intoxicated patron sales monitoring was initiated in 2019 in 12 alcohol sales venues (bars) in Geelong to examine the effect of feedback letters. (4) Community trends in youth alcohol-related hospitalisation rates were monitored. The study results include the following: (1) The Warrnambool campaign was associated with significant increases in staff confidence (effect size [ES] difference 0.8 standard deviation units), and non-significant increases in staff behaviour (ES = 0.4). (2) 4500 brochures were distributed and the online campaign had 33,184 views. (3) On average, 92

Temporal properties, such as duration, rate, and rhythm, are crucial aspects influencing the perception and production of speech. To study how these properties affect speech processing, researchers can create retimed experimental stimuli with varying temporal patterns. However, retiming speech also poses significant challenges, such as preserving naturalness, intelligibility, and prosody.In this chapter, we present three methods of altering the acoustic speech signal to achieve a desired rhythmic structure. Each method differs in how it adjusts the timing of the utterance and its segments. The methods are used to create stimuli with regular isochronous stress. We evaluate the methods in terms of how much they disrupt the speech signal and how effective they are in achieving isochrony.Finally, we demonstrate how retiming can be used to produce stimuli with more naturalistic rhythmic characteristics. We show that retiming can be a powerful tool for exploring perceptual effects of timing in speech.

Studies show that phonetic detail signals morphological structure. Previous studies of English prefixes examined one dialect and speech style, and/or measured only duration. This study examines phonetic detail of prefix and nonprefix mis-and dis-(e.g., discolour, discover) in four dialects of natural conversational English: New Zealand, USA (Ohio), UK (Glasgow and Liverpool). Principal component (PC) analyses reduced 14 acoustic variables to five dimensions of variation: [s] duration, [s] spectral shape, vowel duration, vowel quality and [s] 'low-frequency cutoff' frequency. We assessed whether these dimensions are affected by prefixedness, in a binary or gradient fashion, and by control predictors of word frequency, early/late lexical stress, the fourth phoneme, and mis-dis-. The dialects used different combinations of PCs to signal prefix status, with each PC used by at least one dialect. Vowel duration is the most statistically robust and generalizable effect. Whether or not the fourth phoneme is a stop is also influential. All PCs showed binary effects of prefix status. Within prefixes, vowel quality and [s] low-frequency cutoff showed gradient effects, covarying with judged degree of prefixedness. The observed patterns reflect how each dialect adjusts these syllables' prosodic weight to conform with its dialect-specific speech rhythm and patterns of syllable reduction.

Schools are complex settings that can be leveraged to support the promotion of students’ mental health. The Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS) initiative and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Coordinator (MHWC) role were developed in Victoria, Australia, in response to a reported need for improved capabilities in elementary schools (referred to as ‘primary schools’ henceforth) to support children aged 5–12 years with mental health challenges. The MHWC role and the wider initiative aimed to address some of the common barriers to supporting children’s mental health, including lack of confidence in teaching staff, difficulties accessing and navigating community-based services, and the growing number of children with mental health challenges. The current study aimed to gather initial evidence for the feasibility and acceptability of the MHWC role in primary schools in Victoria, Australia, as a key component of the MHiPS initiative. Quantitative and qualitative results from surveys and a focus group with 10 pilot schools in metropolitan and rural/regional Victoria suggested the role was feasible and acceptable, and that study procedures were appropriate. However, clarification of the MHWC role scope and improving school leadership support could help support the role’s implementation. Further refinements to study procedures are also required. Initial findings warrant the expansion of the developmental feasibility pilot into a larger quasi-experimental trial.

This study investigates the impact of clear speech modifications on perceived tempo, when listeners judge utterances that differ in speaking mode but are matched for articulation rate. Previous research motivates competing hypotheses: clear stimuli should sound faster if listeners' judgements are informed by differences in rate of spectral change; or slower if listeners are informed by knowledge of production patterns and differences in intelligibility; or the same in tempo if listeners weigh the available cues equally. This study addresses these hypotheses in three experiments using paired clear and normal productions of English sentences, with the clear productions manipulated to match their articulation rate to that of the normal productions. Experiment 1 assessed listeners' ability to separate the parameters of tempo and speaking mode when exposed to these pairs. Experiment 2 assessed the perceived direction of tempo difference in the same pairs. Experiment 3 expanded on Experiment 2 by adding two dimensions of variability: productions of different sentences were paired, and articulation rate was further manipulated to yield slow, mid, and fast pairs. Across the experiments, the hypothesis that rate-matched clear stimuli should sound faster than normal ones finds the strongest support. Implications for our understanding of tempo perception are discussed.

BackgroundChild mental health conditions in Australian children continue to be a major concern with high prevalence rates, and amplified by the COVID pandemic. Given a minority of children receive professional help, universal platforms such as primary schools are increasingly recognized as having an important role in supporting children's mental health. International studies suggest that schools are largely ill-equipped to support children's mental health, and little research explores the views of primary school staff.PurposeThis qualitative study aims to examine the challenges faced by primary school staff in identifying and supporting students with mental health difficulties.MethodsWe carried out interviews and focus groups with 56 school staff, including teachers, well-being officers, leadership staff and departmental psychologists, from 25 primary schools across the state of Victoria, Australia. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsThe key theme that emerged was that teachers lack the capacity, skills, confidence and resources to recognize and support children with mental health difficulties. A lack of staff resourcing and onsite support from mental health professionals, together with contributing student family issues, imposes a major challenge in addressing children's mental health needs.ConclusionsOur findings indicate that teachers, and primary schools more broadly, are struggling to support children with mental health difficulties. There is a pressing need to consider how to build the capacity of primary school teachers and schools to enable them to play an active role in supporting children's mental health and well-being.

We report on two experiments that aimed to test the hypothesis that English listeners orient to full pronunciation forms—“canonical forms”—in judging the tempo of speech that features deletions. If listeners orient to canonical forms, this should mean that the perceived tempo of speech containing deletions is highly relative to the speech’s articulation rate calculated on the basis of surface phone strings. We used controlled stimuli to test this hypothesis. We created sentences with one ambiguous word form (for example, support~sport), to give half of the listeners an orthographic form that includes support and the other half an otherwise identical orthographic form with sport. In both experiments, listeners judged the tempo of the sentences, which allowed us to assess whether the difference in imposed interpretation had an impact on perceived tempo. Experiment 1 used a tempo rating task in which listeners evaluated the tempo of experimental stimuli relative to comparison stimuli, on a continuous scale. Experiment 2 used a tempo comparison task in which listeners judged whether second members of stimulus pairs were slower or faster than first members. Both experiments revealed the predicted effect of the imposed word interpretation: sentences with an imposed “schwa” interpretation for the ambiguous word form were judged faster than (the same) sentences with an imposed “no schwa” interpretation. However, in both experiments the effect was small and variables related to the experimental design had significant effects on responses. We discuss the results’ implications for our understanding of speech tempo perception.

Although consensual sending of sexts between adolescents is considered developmentally appropriate, it may also entail a range of negative consequences. Current sexting research lacks a comprehensive theoretical framework identifying a range of risk and protective factors underpinning adolescent consensual sending of sexts across individual, interpersonal, and distal levels. Further, there is a lack of systematic evaluation of how the importance of these factors may vary across adolescent age. This study investigated the utility of the Social Development Model to predict a range of risk and protective factors across individual, family, peer, school, and community-level factors. The sample included 1302 teenagers from Victoria, Australia (Mage = 14.54, SD = 1.14, 50.8% girls). Results indicated that 146 (11.7%) participants sent a sext (76 boys and 70 girls). Logistic regression analyses revealed that the Social Development Model accounted for 45.8% of variance in sexting, with greater likelihood of sending sexts being associated with older age, prior sexual activity, school sector, physical activity, lifetime substance use, greater depressive symptoms, sensation seeking, and perceived substance availability in the community. Multigroup analyses revealed that lifetime substance use was associated with a greater likelihood of sending sexts among younger teens. Among older adolescents, adaptive coping was associated with reduced engagement in sexting, while higher parental overcontrol and family conflict increased the odds of sending sexts. Overall, sexting is associated with a range of modifiable factors potentially amenable to intervention.

Worldwide, Indigenous youth face ongoing challenges and inequalities. Increasing our understanding of life course patterns in Indigenous youth will assist the design of strategies and interventions that encourage positive development. This study aimed to increase understanding of resilience and positive development in Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth across Australia and the United States of America. The Australian sample comprised 9680 non-Indigenous and 176 Pacific Islander and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The USA sample comprised 2258 non-Indigenous and 220 Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian and Native American/American Indian peoples. Data were used to examine how Indigenous background, volunteering, and community involvement at average age 15 years (Grade 9) predicted five young adult positive development indicators: Year 12 (Grade 12) school completion, tertiary education participation, independent income, paid employment, and intimate relationship formation from age 18 to 28 years. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that while Indigenous youth showed slower increases in positive young adult development over time, when adjusting for socioeconomic disadvantage, there was a reduction in this difference. Moreover, we found that Grade 9 community involvement and volunteering were positively associated with young adult development for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth. Findings indicate the importance of addressing structural inequalities and increasing adolescent opportunities as feasible strategies to improve positive outcomes for young Indigenous adults.

The development of the gut microbiome from birth plays important roles in short- and long-term health, but factors influencing preterm gut microbiome development are poorly understood. In the present study, we use metagenomic sequencing to analyse 1,431 longitudinal stool samples from 123 very preterm infants (<32 weeks’ gestation) who did not develop intestinal disease or sepsis over a study period of 10 years. During the study period, one cohort had no probiotic exposure whereas two cohorts were given different probiotic products: Infloran ( Bifidobacterium bifidum and Lactobacillus acidophilus ) or Labinic ( B. bifidum, B. longum subsp. infantis and L. acidophilus ). Mothers’ own milk, breast milk fortifier, antibiotics and probiotics were significantly associated with the gut microbiome, with probiotics being the most significant factor. Probiotics drove microbiome transition into different preterm gut community types (PGCTs), each enriched in a different Bifidobacterium sp. and significantly associated with increased postnatal age. Functional analyses identified stool metabolites associated with PGCTs and, in preterm-derived organoids, sterile faecal supernatants impacted intestinal, organoid monolayer, gene expression in a PGCT-specific manner. The present study identifies specific influencers of gut microbiome development in very preterm infants, some of which overlap with those impacting term infants. The results highlight the importance of strain-specific differences in probiotic products and their impact on host interactions in the preterm gut.

This research examines the links connecting speech and music, and seeks to provide innovative evidence for the long-debated question whether or not speech prosody of a language leaves a notable imprint in its music. Previous studies have frequently focused on the distinction between music from composers who speak a language classed either as ‘stress-timed’ (like English, German) or as ‘syllable-timed’ (like French, Italian), with rather mixed results. Given that the typological distinction between the two rhythm templates is considered controversial, it may be not surprising that to date, empirical support for the idea that the native language of a composer influences their music is limited. The present study aimed to test this hypothesis by eliminating some methodological issues known from previous research. It collected spoken and musical data from contemporary classical composers, native speakers either of Standard Southern British English or of Standard Scottish English. The two varieties of English were chosen for their distinct timing patterns. The results provide support for the idea that music of a composer shares some temporal patterning with their spoken language and are discussed with reference to cognitive processes of implicit statistical learning.

We report on an experiment aimed to test the hypothesis that listeners orient to canonical forms when judging the tempo of reduced speech. Orientation to canonical forms should yield higher tempo estimates than orientation to surface phone strings when canonical phones are deleted. We tested the hypothesis for English, capitalizing on the fact that the non-realization of schwa in an unstressed syllable (e.g. support ) may result in a surface phone string associated with a different word than the intended one ( sport ). We presented listeners with sentences containing ambiguous surface realizations, along with orthographic representations which convinced some that they were listening to disyllabic words ( support etc.) and others that they were listening to monosyllabic ones ( sport etc.). Asking listeners to judge the tempo of the sentences allowed us to assess whether the difference in imposed lexical interpretation had an impact on perceived tempo. Our results reveal the predicted effect of the imposed interpretation: sentences with a ‘disyllabic’ interpretation for the ambiguous word form were judged faster than (the same) sentences with a ‘monosyllabic’ interpretation.

Studies that quantify speech tempo tend to use one of various available rate measures. The relationship between these measures and perceived tempo as elicited through listening experiments remains poorly understood. This study furthers our understanding of the relationship between measured articulation rates and perceived speech tempo, and the impact of syllable and phone deletions on speech tempo perception. We follow previous work in using stimuli from a corpus of unscripted speech, and in sampling stimuli in distinct 'global tempo' ranges. Within our stimulus sets, the differences between canonical and surface rate measurements are directly due to syllable or phone deletions. Our results for syllable rates suggest that listeners use both canonical and surface rates to estimate speech tempo: that is, deletions do not have a consistent effect on perceived tempo. Our results for phone rates suggest that surface phone rate also influences judgements, but canonical phone rate does not. Our results also confirm previously-reported effects of f0 and intensity on speech tempo perception, plus an effect of stimulus duration, but no effect of listeners' own tempo production tendencies.CO 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Studies in which speech tempo is quantified commonly use either syllable or segment rate as a proxy measure of tempo. Perception studies have shown that syllable rate measurements correlate closely with elicited tempo judgements across languages. Some research suggests that segment rate is an additional, independent predictor of perceived tempo — in other words, that both syllable rate and syllable complexity matter for tempo perception. However, direct empirical evidence for this is as yet lacking. This paper reports on three experiments that test the hypothesis that when segment rate is varied on a constant syllable rate, listeners estimate utterances with higher segment rates as faster. Our results provide evidence for listeners' orientation to syllable rate in estimating tempo, and evidence for listeners' additional orientation to segment rate — that is, to syllable complexity. However, the latter orientation is only observable when stimuli are variable in duration: when presented with stimuli that are identical both in syllable rate and duration, listeners do not appear to hear stimuli with more complex syllables as faster.

Studies of speech tempo commonly use syllable or segment rate as a proxy measure for perceived tempo. While listeners' sensitivity to syllable rate is well-established [1-4], clear evidence for listeners' additional sensitivity to segment rate - that is, to syllable complexity alongside syllable rate - is as yet lacking. In [5, 6] we reported on experiments that showed no evidence for listeners' orientation to segment rate differences between stimuli that have the same syllable rate. In these experiments, we kept syllable rate constant by working with a single carrier phrase and equalizing phrase durations. Given that phrase duration is a separate temporal parameter from syllable rate, it is important to complement this work with experiments using less homogeneous stimulus sets, in which syllable rate is controlled without equalizing stimulus durations. In this paper we report on an experiment that uses stimuli selected from a corpus of unscripted British English speech. Within crucial subsets there was minimal variation in one out of syllable and segment rate, and substantial variation in the other. Stimulus duration varied independently. Listeners ranked stimuli for perceived tempo. Results suggest that faced with these more variable stimuli, listeners do orient to segment rate in ranking stimuli that have near-identical syllable rates - presumably reflecting the influence of syllable complexity. Moreover, stimulus duration emerges as a separate factor influencing listeners' rankings.

ABSTRACT Using image analysis of scanning electron micrographs (SEMs), we compared differences in growth of D-stage veligers [i.e. prodissoconch I and II (PI and PII) larvae] of eastern oysters Crassostrea virginica grown in mesohaline water under high- and low-CO2 conditions. We found SEMs to reveal no evidence of dissolution or shell structure deformity for larval shells in either of the CO2 treatments but detected prominent growth lines in the PII regions of larval shells. The number of growth lines closely approximated the duration of the experiment, suggesting that growth lines are generated daily. Mean growth line interval widths were 20% greater for larval shells cultured in low- vs high-CO2 conditions. Crassostrea virginica veliger larvae were shown to tolerate high CO2 levels and aragonite saturation states (Ωarag) < 1.0, but larval growth was slowed substantially under these conditions. Differences in growth line interval width translate into substantial changes in shell area and account for previously observed differences in total shell area between the treatments, as determined by light microscopy and image analysis. Other studies have documented high mortality and malformation of D-stage larvae in bivalves when pre-veliger life stages (i.e. eggs, gastrula and trochophores) were exposed to elevated CO2. Our experiments revealed statistical differences in rates of larval survival, settlement and subsequent early-stage spat mortality for veligers reared in high- and low-CO2 conditions. Although each of these rates was measurably affected by high CO2, the magnitude of these differences was small (range across categories = 0.7–6.3%) suggesting that the impacts may not be catastrophic, as implied by several previous studies. We believe the apparent disparity among experimental results may be best explained by differential vulnerability of pre-veliger stage larvae and veligers, whereby PI and PII larvae have greater physiological capacity to withstand environmental conditions that may be thermodynamically unfavourable to calcification (i.e. Ωarag < 1.0).

As the United States continues to be ravaged by COVID-19, it becomes increasingly important to implement effective public health campaigns to improve personal behaviors that help control the spread of the virus. To design effective campaigns, research is needed to understand the current mitigation intentions of the general public, diversity in those intentions, and theoretical predictors of them. COVID-19 campaigns will be particularly challenging because mitigation involves myriad, diverse behaviors. This study takes a person-centered approach to investigate data from a survey (N = 976) of Pennsylvania adults. Latent class analysis revealed five classes of mitigation: one marked by complete adherence with health recommendations (34% of the sample), one by complete refusal (9% of the sample), and three by a mixture of adherence and refusal. Statistically significant covariates of class membership included relatively negative injunctive norms, risk due to essential workers in the household, personal knowledge of someone who became infected with COVID-19, and belief that COVID-19 was a leaked biological weapon. Additionally, trait reactance was associated with non-adherence while health mavenism was associated with adherence. These findings may be used to good effect by local healthcare providers and institutions, and also inform broader policy-making decisions regarding public health campaigns to mitigate COVID-19.

Accentual prominence has well-documented effects on various phonetic properties, including timing, vowel quality, amplitude, and pitch. These cues can exist in trading relationships and can differ in magnitude in different languages. Less is understood about how phonetic cues to accentuation surface under different phonological constraints, such as those posed by segmental phonology, aspects of the prosodic hierarchy, and intonational phonology. Dialectal comparisons offer a valuable window on these issues, because dialects of a language share basic aspects of structure and function, but can differ in key segmental and suprasegmental constraints which may affect the cues that realise accentual prominence. We compared the realisation of trochaic words (e.g. cheesy, picky) in accented/unaccented and phrase-final/non-final positions in two dialects of British English, Standard Southern British English, and Standard Scottish English as spoken in Glasgow. We found generally shallower prominence gradients for Glasgow than SSBE with respect to intensity and duration, and very little evidence of accentual lengthening of vowels in Glasgow, compared to robust effects in SSBE. In contrast, phrase-finality had similar effects across the two dialects. The differences observed illustrate how the expression of accentual prominence reflects and reveals the different segmental and intonational systems that operate within dialects of the same language. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Society for Prevention Research 27th Annual Meeting, USA. Paper presented within the group symposia: The Cross-National Generalizability of Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent and Young Adult Delinquency, Depressive Symptoms, and Homelessness

Purpose: Reciprocal prospective associations between adolescent antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms were examined. Methods: Seventh grade students (average age 13 years; N = 2314/2348) were surveyed (T1), and then followed-up 12 (T2) and 24 months (T3) later, using the same methods in Washington State, United States and Victoria, Australia. Results: Negative binomial regressions showed antisocial behavior (T1, T2) did not prospectively predict depressive symptoms (T2, T3). T1 multivariate predictors for T2 depressive symptoms included female gender (incident rate ratio [IRR] = 1.70), prior depressive symptoms (IRR = 1.06), alcohol use (IRR = 1.13), family conflict (IRR = 1.13), antisocial peers (IRR = 1.08) and bullying victimization (IRR = 1.06). Depressive symptoms (T1, T2) did not predict antisocial behavior (T2, T3). T1 multivariate predictors for T2 antisocial behavior included female gender (IRR = 0.96), age (IRR = 0.97), prior antisocial behavior (IRR = 1.32), alcohol use (IRR = 1.04), antisocial peers (IRR = 1.11) and academic failure (IRR = 1.03). Conclusions: Depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviors showed considerable predictive stability in early adolescence but were not reciprocally related. Prevention and intervention strategies in adolescence may benefit by targeting common predictors such as alcohol, peer interactions and early symptoms for depression and antisocial behavior.