How does cognitive load influence speech perception? An encoding hypothesis

Mitterer, Holger; Mattys, Sven L.

doi:10.3758/s13414-016-1195-3

Cited by 23 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Our results argue for a temporal ordering of effects such that acoustic context effects precede any modulating effects of cognitive load. This proposal is in line with a recent study by Mitterer and Mattys (2016). They argue that cognitive load does not necessarily or solely reduce the fidelity of early perceptual processes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Cognitive load makes speech sound fast, but does not modulate acoustic context effects

Bosker

Reinisch

Sjerps

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

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a b s t r a c tIn natural situations, speech perception often takes place during the concurrent execution of other cognitive tasks, such as listening while viewing a visual scene. The execution of a dual task typically has detrimental effects on concurrent speech perception, but how exactly cognitive load disrupts speech encoding is still unclear. The detrimental effect on speech representations may consist of either a general reduction in the robustness of processing of the speech signal ('noisy encoding'), or, alternatively it may specifically influence the temporal sampling of the sensory input, with listeners missing temporal pulses, thus underestimating segmental durations ('shrinking of time'). The present study investigated whether and how spectral and temporal cues in a precursor sentence that has been processed under high vs. low cognitive load influence the perception of a subsequent target word. If cognitive load effects are implemented through 'noisy encoding', increasing cognitive load during the precursor should attenuate the encoding of both its temporal and spectral cues, and hence reduce the contextual effect that these cues can have on subsequent target sound perception. However, if cognitive load effects are expressed as 'shrinking of time', context effects should not be modulated by load, but a main effect would be expected on the perceived duration of the speech signal. Results from two experiments indicate that increasing cognitive load (manipulated through a secondary visual search task) did not modulate temporal (Experiment 1) or spectral context effects (Experiment 2). However, a consistent main effect of cognitive load was found: increasing cognitive load during the precursor induced a perceptual increase in its perceived speech rate, biasing the perception of a following target word towards longer durations. This finding suggests that cognitive load effects in speech perception are implemented via 'shrinking of time', in line with a temporal sampling framework. In addition, we argue that our results align with a model in which early (spectral and temporal) normalization is unaffected by attention but later adjustments may be attention-dependent.Ó 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. IntroductionSpeech perception is most commonly studied under ideal listening conditions that allow participants to dedicate their full attention to the listening task at hand. However, natural conversations typically take place in a world http://dx

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Cognitive load makes speech sound fast, but does not modulate acoustic context effects

Bosker

Reinisch

Sjerps

2017

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…This study, consistent with these previous studies, showed that the syllable-rate neural response, although reliably observed in all tested conditions, is modulated by top-down attention. Behaviorally, it has also been shown that a cross-modal sensory stimulus with no linguistic content could interfere with syllabic-level processing (Mattys and Wiget, 2011;Mitterer and Mattys, 2017).…”

Section: Attention Modulation Of Neural Tracking Of the Speech Envelopementioning

confidence: 99%

Attention Is Required for Knowledge-Based Sequential Grouping: Insights from the Integration of Syllables into Words

Ding¹,

Pan²,

Luo³

et al. 2017

J. Neurosci.

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How the brain groups sequential sensory events into chunks is a fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience. This study investigates whether top-down attention or specific tasks are required for the brain to apply lexical knowledge to group syllables into words. Neural responses tracking the syllabic and word rhythms of a rhythmic speech sequence were concurrently monitored using electroencephalography (EEG). The participants performed different tasks, attending to either the rhythmic speech sequence or a distractor, which was another speech stream or a nonlinguistic auditory/visual stimulus. Attention to speech, but not a lexical-meaning-related task, was required for reliable neural tracking of words, even when the distractor was a nonlinguistic stimulus presented cross-modally. Neural tracking of syllables, however, was reliably observed in all tested conditions. These results strongly suggest that neural encoding of individual auditory events (i.e., syllables) is automatic, while knowledge-based construction of temporal chunks (i.e., words) crucially relies on top-down attention.

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“…This additional production of a challenging contrast could have increased cognitive load during the perceptual task. Earlier research indicates that cognitive load can reduce perceptual acuity during different kinds of speech discrimination tasks (Mattys et al, 2014;Mattys and Wiget, 2011) and might result in competition for working memory processes at the encoding stage (Mitterer and Mattys, 2017). Based on those findings, the increased task load in the production practice condition in Baese-Berk and Samuel (2016) is likely to result in suboptimal encoding of the trained contrast.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Perception and production in interaction during non-native speech category learning

Thorin

Sadakata

Desain

et al. 2018

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Establishing non-native phoneme categories can be a notoriously difficult endeavour-in both speech perception and speech production. This study asks how these two domains interact in the course of this learning process. It investigates the effect of perceptual learning and related production practice of a challenging non-native category on the perception and/or production of that category. A four-day perceptual training protocol on the British English /æ/-/ɛ/ vowel contrast was combined with either related or unrelated production practice. After feedback on perceptual categorisation of the contrast, native Dutch participants in the related production group (N = 19) pronounced the trial's correct answer, while participants in the unrelated production group (N = 19) pronounced similar but phonologically unrelated words. Comparison of pre- and post-tests showed significant improvement over the course of training in both perception and production, but no differences between the groups were found. The lack of an effect of production practice is discussed in the light of previous, competing results and models of second-language speech perception and production. This study confirms that, even in the context of related production practice, perceptual training boosts production learning.

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How does cognitive load influence speech perception? An encoding hypothesis

Cited by 23 publications

References 19 publications

Cognitive load makes speech sound fast, but does not modulate acoustic context effects

Cognitive load makes speech sound fast, but does not modulate acoustic context effects

Attention Is Required for Knowledge-Based Sequential Grouping: Insights from the Integration of Syllables into Words

Perception and production in interaction during non-native speech category learning

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