title: The Pervasiveness of 1/f Scaling in Speech Reflects the Metastable Basis of Cognition.
abstract: Human neural and behavioral activities have been reported to exhibit fractal dynamics known as 1/f noise, which is more aptly named 1/f scaling. Some argue that 1/f scaling is a general and pervasive property of the dynamical substrate from which cognitive functions are formed. Others argue that it is an idiosyncratic property of domain-specific processes. An experiment was conducted to investigate whether 1/f scaling pervades the intrinsic fluctuations of a spoken word. Ten participants each repeated the word bucket over 1,000 times, and fluctuations in acoustic measurements across repetitions generally followed the 1/f scaling relation, including numerous parallel yet distinct series of 1/f fluctuations. On the basis of work showing that 1/f scaling is a universal earmark of metastability, it is proposed that the observed pervasiveness of 1/f fluctuations in speech reflects the fact that cognitive functions are formed as metastable patterns of activity in brain, body, and environment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, George Mason UniversityDepartment of Psychology, California State University at NorthridgeDepartment of Psychology, University of Cincinnati.
authors.forename: Christopher T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Kello
authors.forename: Gregory G
authors.initials: GG
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: John G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Holden
authors.forename: Guy C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Van Orden