Plasticity of categories in speech perception and production

Abstract

While perceptual categories exhibit plasticity following recently heard speech, evidence of effects on production have been mixed. We tested influences of perceptual plasticity on production with an implicit distributional learning paradigm. In Experiment 1 we exposed participants to an unlabeled bimodal distribution of voice onset time (VOT) using bilabial stop consonants, with a longer category boundary than is typical. Participants' perceptual category boundaries shifted towards longer VOT, with a congruent increase in production VOT. Experiment 2 found evidence of perceptual transfer of these shifts to a different speaker and different syllables, and different words in production. Experiment 3 showed no shifts following exposure to a VOT boundary shorter than typical. We conclude that when listeners adjust their perceptual category boundaries, these changes may affect production categories, consistent with models where speech perception and production categories are linked, but with category boundaries influencing the link between perception and production.

What we do (not) know about the mechanisms underlying adaptive speech perception: A computational framework and review

“…The majority of recent behavioral research on talker adaptation has focused on the middle layer, changes in the mapping from acoustic or phonetic cues onto phonological categories (for brevity: changes in category representations). This includes proposals that attribute exposure effects to "boundary re-tuning/shift" (e.g., , "perceptual/category recalibration" (e.g., Reinisch & Holt, 2013;Samuel, 2016;Vroomen & Baart, 2009), "perceptual retuning" (Jesse & McQueen, 2011;McQueen et al, 2006;, "category shift" (Lindsay et al, 2022;Sawusch & Pisoni, 1976); "category expansion" (Schmale et al, 2012), "dimension-based statistical learning" , or "criteria relaxation" (Zheng & Samuel, 2020). While these proposals are often not further formally specified or modeled (for notable exceptions, see Lancia & Winter, 2013;, they all describe types of changes in representations.…”

The Relationship Between Pitch Discrimination and Fundamental Frequency Variation: Effects of Singing Status and Vocal Hyperfunction

“…3−6 Other studies have also found evidence within the articulatory domain of speech supporting a perception/production relationship: individuals with better perceptual abilities showed smaller auditory target regions and greater distinctions in production for various articulatory features, including sibilants, 7,8 approximants, 9 Dutch obstruent devoicing, 10 Illinois English /ɑ-ɔ/, 11 and voice onset time (VOT) for stop consonants. 12,13 Despite this well-established relationship within the articulatory domain, the perception/production relationship is less well-defined for voice parameters of speech production, such as pitch. Thus, several researchers have attempted to apply current models of speech motor control (based on the evidence from articulation) to the voice domain.…”

Transfer of statistical learning from passive speech perception to speech production

“…However, results are variable and hard to predict. Shadowers imitate lengthened voice onset times (VOT), but not shortened VOTs (Lindsay et al, 2022 ; Nielsen, 2011 ; but see also Schertz & Paquette-Smith, 2023 ). Phonetic convergence occurs only for some utterances or some acoustic dimensions but not others (Pardo et al, 2013 ).…”