Maintaining Distinctiveness at Increased Speaking Rates: A Comparison between Congenitally Blind and Sighted Speakers

Ménard, Lucie; Côté, Dominique; Trudeau-Fisette, Pamela

doi:10.1159/000470905

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The group difference is particularly salient for /u/, for which blind speakers produced larger lip width than sighted speakers. This is in line with our previous findings that place of articulation and rounding are implemented by different lip and tongue settings in sighted and blind adults (for instance [ 11 , 12 ]). It is not surprising, then, that /u/ produced by blind speakers was mostly misidentified as /y/.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Eight congenitally blind adults (6 men; 2 women), aged between 43 and 65, were recruited from our cohort of blind participants (see [ 9 , 10 , 12 ]). Because of technical issues, stimuli produced by only four sighted speakers from the 2009 study were included.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, speakers who exhibit atypical speech production, due to sensory deprivation or articulatory impairment, often have lower intelligibility scores. Individuals who have never had access to visual cues, for instance, have reduced (visible) lip gestures, but as a trade-off, they produce larger (invisible) tongue contrasts [ 9 – 12 ]. What are the consequences of such differences for the multimodal intelligibility of their speech?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Intelligibility of speech produced by sighted and blind adults

2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose It is well known that speech uses both the auditory and visual modalities to convey information. In cases of congenital sensory deprivation, the feedback language learners have access to for mapping visible and invisible orofacial articulation is impoverished. Although the effects of blindness on the movements of the lips, jaw, and tongue have been documented in francophone adults, not much is known about their consequences for speech intelligibility. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of congenital visual deprivation on vowel intelligibility in adult speakers of Canadian French. Method Twenty adult listeners performed two perceptual identification tasks in which vowels produced by congenitally blind adults and sighted adults were used as stimuli. The vowels were presented in the auditory, visual, and audiovisual modalities (experiment 1) and at different signal-to-noise ratios in the audiovisual modality (experiment 2). Correct identification scores were calculated. Sequential information analyses were also conducted to assess the amount of information transmitted to the listeners along the three vowel features of height, place of articulation, and rounding. Results The results showed that, although blind speakers did not differ from their sighted peers in the auditory modality, they had lower scores in the audiovisual and visual modalities. Some vowels produced by blind speakers are also less robust in noise than those produced by sighted speakers. Conclusion Together, the results suggest that adult blind speakers have learned to adapt to their sensory loss so that they can successfully achieve intelligible vowel targets in non-noisy conditions but that they produce less intelligible speech in noisy conditions. Thus, the trade-off between visible (lips) and invisible (tongue) articulatory cues observed between vowels produced by blind and sighted speakers is not equivalent in terms of perceptual efficiency.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Intelligibility of speech produced by sighted and blind adults

2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Impact of visual and auditory deprivation on speech perception and production in adults

Turgeon¹,

Trudeau-Fisette²,

Leporé

et al. 2020

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Visual feedback of the tongue influences speech adaptation to a physical modification of the oral cavity

Barbier

Merzouki

Bal

et al. 2021

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Studies examining sensorimotor adaptation of speech to changing sensory conditions have demonstrated a central role for both auditory and somatosensory feedback in speech motor learning. The potential influence of visual feedback of oral articulators, which is not typically available during speech production but may nonetheless enhance oral motor control, remains poorly understood. The present study explores the influence of ultrasound visual feedback of the tongue on adaptation of speech production (focusing on the sound /s/) to a physical perturbation of the oral articulators (prosthesis altering the shape of the hard palate). Two visual feedback groups were tested that differed in the two-dimensional plane being imaged (coronal or sagittal) during practice producing /s/ words, along with a no-visual-feedback control group. Participants in the coronal condition were found to adapt their speech production across a broader range of acoustic spectral moments and syllable contexts than the no-feedback controls. In contrast, the sagittal group showed reduced adaptation compared to no-feedback controls. The results indicate that real-time visual feedback of the tongue is spontaneously integrated during speech motor adaptation, with effects that can enhance or interfere with oral motor learning depending on compatibility of the visual articulatory information with requirements of the speaking task. V

show abstract

Maintaining Distinctiveness at Increased Speaking Rates: A Comparison between Congenitally Blind and Sighted Speakers

Cited by 4 publications

References 17 publications

Intelligibility of speech produced by sighted and blind adults

Intelligibility of speech produced by sighted and blind adults

Impact of visual and auditory deprivation on speech perception and production in adults

Visual feedback of the tongue influences speech adaptation to a physical modification of the oral cavity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About