Spoken Word Recognition: The Challenge of Variation

Luce, Paul A.; McLennan, Conor T.

doi:10.1002/9780470757024.ch24

Cited by 49 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…However, there is plenty of precedence to suggest that our observed effects would generalize to other diverse samples of models and shadowers of both genders. Within the speech literature, robust visual (for reviews, see Fowler, 2004;Rosenblum, 2008) and lexical (for a review, see Luce & McLennan, 2005) influences on auditory speech perception are reported across diverse samples of models and participants, with many studies employing stimuli derived from a single model talker (e.g., Brancazio, 2004;Erber, 1971;Luce, Pisoni, & Goldinger, 1990;Remez et al, 1998;Rosenblum et al, 1996;Ross et al, 2007;Tye-Murray, Sommers, & Spehar, 2007). Within the phonetic convergence literature (much of which is cited in this article), automatic imitation of perceived speech has been observed across studies employing diverse samples of models, shadowers, and conversational partners.…”

Section: Lexical Characteristics Influence Phonetic Convergencementioning

confidence: 99%

Visibility of speech articulation enhances auditory phonetic convergence

Dias

Rosenblum

2015

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Talkers automatically imitate aspects of perceived speech, a phenomenon known as phonetic convergence. Talkers have previously been found to converge to auditory and visual speech information. Furthermore, talkers converge more to the speech of a conversational partner who is seen and heard, relative to one who is just heard (Dias & Rosenblum Perception, 40, 1457-1466, 2011. A question raised by this finding is what visual information facilitates the enhancement effect. In the following experiments, we investigated the possible contributions of visible speech articulation to visual enhancement of phonetic convergence within the noninteractive context of a shadowing task. In Experiment 1, we examined the influence of the visibility of a talker on phonetic convergence when shadowing auditory speech either in the clear or in low-level auditory noise. The results suggest that visual speech can compensate for convergence that is reduced by auditory noise masking. Experiment 2 further established the visibility of articulatory mouth movements as being important to the visual enhancement of phonetic convergence. Furthermore, the word frequency and phonological neighborhood density characteristics of the words shadowed were found to significantly predict phonetic convergence in both experiments. Consistent with previous findings (e.g., Goldinger Psychological Review, 105, 251-279, 1998), phonetic convergence was greater when shadowing low-frequency words. Convergence was also found to be greater for low-density words, contrasting with previous predictions of the effect of phonological neighborhood density on auditory phonetic convergence (e.g., Pardo, Jordan, Mallari, Scanlon, & Lewandowski Journal of Memory and Language, 69, 183-195, 2013). Implications of the results for a gestural account of phonetic convergence are discussed.

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Section: Lexical Characteristics Influence Phonetic Convergencementioning

confidence: 99%

Visibility of speech articulation enhances auditory phonetic convergence

Dias

Rosenblum

2015

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…Coding in primary auditory cortex is sensitive even to minor physical transformations. Object-centered coding in higher areas, however, must be invariant (i.e., tolerant of natural stimulus variation) (6). For example, whereas the phonemic structure of a word is fixed, there is considerable variation in physical, spectrotemporal form-attributable to accent, pronunciation, body size, and the like-among utterances of a given word.…”

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confidence: 99%

Phoneme and word recognition in the auditory ventral stream

DeWitt

Rauschecker²

2012

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

409

328

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Spoken word recognition requires complex, invariant representations. Using a meta-analytic approach incorporating more than 100 functional imaging experiments, we show that preference for complex sounds emerges in the human auditory ventral stream in a hierarchical fashion, consistent with nonhuman primate electrophysiology. Examining speech sounds, we show that activation associated with the processing of short-timescale patterns (i.e., phonemes) is consistently localized to left mid-superior temporal gyrus (STG), whereas activation associated with the integration of phonemes into temporally complex patterns (i.e., words) is consistently localized to left anterior STG. Further, we show left midto anterior STG is reliably implicated in the invariant representation of phonetic forms and that this area also responds preferentially to phonetic sounds, above artificial control sounds or environmental sounds. Together, this shows increasing encoding specificity and invariance along the auditory ventral stream for temporally complex speech sounds.functional MRI | meta-analysis | auditory cortex | object recognition | language S poken word recognition presents several challenges to the brain. Two key challenges are the assembly of complex auditory representations and the variability of natural speech (SI Appendix, Fig. S1) (1). Representation at the level of primary auditory cortex is precise: fine-grained in scale and local in spectrotemporal space (2, 3). The recognition of complex spectrotemporal forms, like words, in higher areas of auditory cortex requires the transformation of this granular representation into Gestalt-like, object-centered representations. In brief, local features must be bound together to form representations of complex spectrotemporal contours, which are themselves the constituents of auditory "objects" or complex sound patterns (4, 5). Next, representations must be generalized and abstracted. Coding in primary auditory cortex is sensitive even to minor physical transformations. Object-centered coding in higher areas, however, must be invariant (i.e., tolerant of natural stimulus variation) (6). For example, whereas the phonemic structure of a word is fixed, there is considerable variation in physical, spectrotemporal form-attributable to accent, pronunciation, body size, and the like-among utterances of a given word. It has been proposed for visual cortical processing that a feed-forward, hierarchical architecture (7) may be capable of simultaneously solving the problems of complexity and variability (8-12). Here, we examine these ideas in the context of auditory cortex.In a hierarchical pattern-recognition scheme (8), coding in the earliest cortical field would reflect the tuning and organization of primary auditory cortex (or core) (2, 3, 13). That is, single-neuron receptive fields (more precisely, frequency-response areas) would be tuned to particular center frequencies and would have minimal spectrotemporal complexity (i.e., a single excitatory zone and one-to-two inhibitory side bands). ...

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“…This has changed in the past decade. The question of lexical representations and the processes via which different variants of a same word are accessed is now considered to be a major challenge in the field of adult psycholinguistics (Luce and McLennan, 2005). The studies contained in this volume, as well as other very recent studies 1 (Miller, 2012 inter alia) illustrate the same turn in the field of language acquisition.…”

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confidence: 64%

Introduction: Language acquisition and sociolinguistic variation

Chevrot¹,

Foulkes

2013

Linguistics

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International audienceThe special issue appears in a new scientific landscape of innovative attempts to link sociolinguistics and cognitive psycholinguistics. Studies on acquisition of variation have been conducted since the late 1960s, but the changing scientific landscape gives them a new impetus. On the one hand, our work draws on and contributes to sociolinguistics. As a result, it focuses on the acquisition of sociolinguistic patterns conceived of as properties shared by communities of speakers consisting of both children and adults. At the same time, our work draws on the traditions of developmental psycholinguistics. These connections lead us to discuss the cognitive mechanisms that are involved in the acquisition of sociolinguistic variants and social meaning. The contributions of the special issue address four questions which may be the key driving issues in research in the years to come

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Spoken Word Recognition: The Challenge of Variation

Cited by 49 publications

References 66 publications

Visibility of speech articulation enhances auditory phonetic convergence

Visibility of speech articulation enhances auditory phonetic convergence

Phoneme and word recognition in the auditory ventral stream

Introduction: Language acquisition and sociolinguistic variation

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