Are there interactive processes in speech perception?

McClelland, James L.; Mirman, Daniel; Holt, Lori L.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.007

Cited by 226 publications

(216 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When the distractor object's name did not share phonetic features with the target object's name (e.g., a raccoon opposite the carriage, or a crayon opposite the tower), there was significantly less curvature in the mousemovement trajectory. These results were interpreted as evidence for parallel partial activation of multiple lexical items competing over time (e.g., Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1999;Luce, Goldinger, Auer, & Vitevitch, 1998;McClelland & Elman, 1986). 1 With a similar visual display, this kind of continuous competition is also observed in computermouse trajectories toward semantic categories for taxonomic classes (e.g., Mammal and Fish), when participants are given atypical animal exemplars to classify (e.g., whale, seal) compared to typical members of those categories (e.g., horse and trout).…”

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Gradiency and visual context in syntactic garden-paths

Farmer

Anderson

Spivey

2007

Journal of Memory and Language

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Through recording the streaming x, y coordinates of computer-mouse movements, we report evidence that visual context provides an immediate constraint on the resolution of syntactic ambiguity in the visual-world paradigm. This finding converges with previous eye-tracking results that support a constraint-based account of sentence processing, in which multiple partially-active syntactic alternatives compete against one another with the help of not only syntactic, semantic, and statistical factors, but also nonlinguistic factors such as visual context. Eye-tracking results in the visual-world paradigm are consistent with theories that posit limited interaction between context and syntax, but they are still consistent with related theories that allow immediate interaction but require serial pursuit of syntactic structures, such as the unrestricted race model. To tease apart the constraint-based and unrestricted-race accounts of sentence processing, the distribution of computer-mouse trajectories was analyzed for evidence of two populations of trials: those where only the correct parse was pursued and those where only the incorrect parse was pursued. We found no evidence of bimodality in the distribution of trajectory curvatures. Simulations with a constraint-based model produced trajectories that matched the human data. A nonlinguistic control study demonstrated the mouse-tracking paradigm's ability to elicit bimodal distributions of trajectory curvatures in certain experimental conditions. With effects of context posing a challenge for syntax-first models, and the absence of bimodality in the distribution of garden-path magnitude posing a challenge for unrestricted-race models, these converging methods support the constraint-based theory's account that the reason diverse contextual factors are able to bias one or another parse at the point of ambiguity is because those syntactic alternatives are continually partially-active in parallel, not discretely winnowed. Keywords Syntax; Continuous; Dynamical; Language and Vision InteractionWhat exactly is a garden-path? About three decades ago, the term was introduced to the psycholinguistic literature in describing what it feels like to have been led astray by syntactic preferences while reading a sentence. The reader reaches some later portion of the sentence, where the syntax and/or the semantics are no longer commensurate or sensible with how she's been parsing the sentence up to that point, and she feels as though she's has been "led down the garden-path." But is a garden-path due to the discrete computation of a mental representation that turns out to be inappropriate and must then be deleted and replaced by an alternative mental representation-as seen with discrete computing algorithms (e.g., Budiu & Anderson, 2004;Dietrich & Markman, 2003;Newell, 1990)? Or is a garden-path due to multiple partially-active mental representations simultaneously competing with one anotherSend correspondence to: Thomas Farmer, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca...

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Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gradiency and visual context in syntactic garden-paths

Farmer

Anderson

Spivey

2007

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…It is either an explicit or implicit presumption of most models of spoken-language perception that linguistic processing begins with discrete phoneme representations, isolated from the messy acoustics involved in their characterization. However, research has undermined this view, as effects of acoustic variation are evident in word recognition (e.g., Hawkins, 2003) and expectations from word and semantic representations feed back to influence speech-sound perception (McClelland, Mirman, & Holt, 2006). Indeed, it is difficult to determine where auditory perception ends and cognition begins; the perception/cognition boundary may be artificial, and assuming its existence may be counterproductive to progress in understanding.…”

Section: An Auditory Cognitive Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Speech Perception Within an Auditory Cognitive Science Framework

Holt

Lotto

2008

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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The complexities of the acoustic speech signal pose many significant challenges for listeners. Although perceiving speech begins with auditory processing, investigation of speech perception has progressed mostly independently of study of the auditory system. Nevertheless, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that cross-fertilization between the two areas of research can be productive. We briefly describe research bridging the study of general auditory processing and speech perception, showing that the latter is constrained and influenced by operating characteristics of the auditory system and that our understanding of the processes involved in speech perception is enhanced by study within a more general framework. The disconnect between the two areas of research has stunted the development of a truly interdisciplinary science, but there is an opportunity for great strides in understanding with the development of an integrated field of auditory cognitive science.Keywords speech perception; auditory perception; auditory cognitive scienceThe ease with which a listener perceives speech in his or her native language belies the complexity of the task. A spoken word exists as a fleeting fluctuation of air molecules for a mere fraction of a second, but listeners are usually able to extract the intended message. The seemingly trivial ability to determine that the spoken words dean, den, dune, and dawn begin with the same English consonant, /d/, is actually a remarkable accomplishment. There are a number of physical acoustic characteristics associated with the production of /d/, and they unfold quickly across just tens of milliseconds. These acoustic correlates vary with the following vowel (such that the initial sound in dean is distinct from that of dune) and the preceding word context, as well as with the dialect, gender, emotional state, and physical stature of the speaker. To make matters more challenging, the particular acoustic correlates utilized by a listener depend on that listener's native language and expectations. Invariant perception ("these are all /d/s") in the face of variable acoustic signals has been one of the central puzzles in the study of speech perception for more than 50 years.Presumably, understanding how the auditory system processes complex sounds can be informative about how speech perception is accomplished; and, likewise, investigation of speech perception can provide clues to how the auditory system functions. Unfortunately,

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“…6) and changes to visual processing due to contextual information (8,9) (this process of constraining lower levels of processing by higher levels is by no means unique to vision; e.g., see ref. 10 for review of interactive processes in speech perception).…”

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confidence: 99%

Language can boost otherwise unseen objects into visual awareness

Lupyan

Ward

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

246

248

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Linguistic labels (e.g., "chair") seem to activate visual properties of the objects to which they refer. Here we investigated whether language-based activation of visual representations can affect the ability to simply detect the presence of an object. We used continuous flash suppression to suppress visual awareness of familiar objects while they were continuously presented to one eye. Participants made simple detection decisions, indicating whether they saw any image. Hearing a verbal label before the simple detection task changed performance relative to an uninformative cue baseline. Valid labels improved performance relative to no-label baseline trials. Invalid labels decreased performance. Labels affected both sensitivity (d′) and response times. In addition, we found that the effectiveness of labels varied predictably as a function of the match between the shape of the stimulus and the shape denoted by the label. Together, the findings suggest that facilitated detection of invisible objects due to language occurs at a perceptual rather than semantic locus. We hypothesize that when information associated with verbal labels matches stimulus-driven activity, language can provide a boost to perception, propelling an otherwise invisible image into awareness.vision | top-down effects | CFS | penetrability of perception

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Are there interactive processes in speech perception?

Cited by 226 publications

References 62 publications

Gradiency and visual context in syntactic garden-paths

Gradiency and visual context in syntactic garden-paths

Speech Perception Within an Auditory Cognitive Science Framework

Language can boost otherwise unseen objects into visual awareness

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