Modulation sensitivity in the perceptual organization of speech

Abstract

In a spoken utterance, a talker expresses linguistic constituents in serial order. A listener resolves these linguistic properties in the rapidly fading auditory sample. Classic measures agree that auditory integration occurs at a fine temporal grain. In contrast, recent studies have proposed that sensory integration of speech occurs at a coarser grain approximate to the syllable, based on indirect and relatively insensitive perceptual measures. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience and behavioral primatology has also been adduced to support the claim of sensory integration at the pace of syllables. The present investigation uses direct performance measures of integration, applying an acoustic technique to isolate the contribution of short-term acoustic properties to the assay of modulation sensitivity. In corroborating the classic finding of a fine temporal grain of integration, these functional measures can inform theory and speculation in accounts of speech perception.

Perceptual Restoration of Temporally Distorted Speech in L1 vs. L2: Local Time Reversal and Modulation Filtering

“…One thing that should be noted here is that the above mentioned experiment measured the intelligibility of speech by asking for subjective judgments – i.e., people read the target speech before listening to it, and judged the intelligibility of locally time-reversed speech subjectively. The repetitive exposure to the target speech might have produced the relatively high intelligibility ratings for relatively long temporal reversal ( Stilp et al, 2010 ; Remez et al, 2013 ; Ueda et al, 2017 ), but this study showed, at least, that people might be tolerant to temporal distortion occurring at a large scale. Their findings raised the question of whether detailed analysis of the temporal fine structure of speech is required in speech perception ( Liberman et al, 1967 ; Steffen and Werani, 1994 ; Greenberg, 1999 ; Greenberg and Arai, 2001 ; Magrin-Chagnolleau et al, 2002 ; Remez et al, 2013 ; Ueda et al, 2017 ).…”

Intelligibility of locally time-reversed speech: A multilingual comparison

“…For example, some authors presented a stimulus in a trial for a fixed number of times 13–15 , ranging from once to five times, whereas other researchers 10–12 let their participants listen ad libitum up to four times on each trial. Some experimenters presented their stimuli in random order 10–12, 14 , whereas others presented them in a systematic order 13 .…”

Irrelevant speech effects with locally time-reversed speech: Native vs non-native language

“…Nakajima et al, 2018;Ueda et al, 2017)]. The results of previous perceptual experiments (Greenberg and Arai, 2001;Ishida et al, 2018;Kiss et al, 2008;Meunier et al, 2002;Nakajima et al, 2018;Remez et al, 2013;Saberi and Perrott, 1999;Steffen and Werani, 1994;Stilp et al, 2010;Ueda et al, 2017) indicate that the auditory system is capable of overriding this kind of degradation and retrieving plausible solutions to some extent, unless the reversed segment duration becomes too long. The restoration process, however, should certainly impose an extra processing load on the auditory system compared to the processing of normal speech.…”