Statistical learning and prosodic bootstrapping differentially affect neural synchronization during speech segmentation

Elmer, Stefan; Valizadeh, Soheil; Cunillera, Toni; Rodrı́guez-Fornells, Antoni

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118051

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…If participants detect these statistical regularities, a steady-state response should emerge at the word presentation rate. Such artificial grammars proved particularly useful to directly explore the cerebral bases of an online learning mechanism ( Batterink and Paller, 2017 , 2019 ; Batterink and Zhang, 2022 ; Buiatti et al, 2009 ; Elmer et al, 2021 ; Farthouat et al, 2017 , 2018 ; Henin et al, 2021 ; Ordin et al, 2020 ; Ramos-Escobar et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of rhythms: how steady-state evoked responses reveal early neurocognitive development

Kabdebon¹,

Fló²,

Heering³

et al. 2022

NeuroImage

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Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of rhythms: how steady-state evoked responses reveal early neurocognitive development

Kabdebon¹,

Fló²,

Heering³

et al. 2022

NeuroImage

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“…Therefore, when trialto-trial responses follow a similar phase pattern, the ITPC should increase relative to the presentation of the stimulus (Luck and Kappenman, 2012). ITPC in combination with ERP was shown to be sensitive to speech integration in delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands between 100 and 600 ms after stimulus onset (Nash-Kille and Sharma, 2014;Sorati and Behne, 2019;Elmer et al, 2021). Our results highlight significant ITPC between words with stereotyped time-locked responses (∼0.6), and significant between-participant ITPC with partial phase synchrony (∼0.25).…”

Section: High Inter-individual Heterogeneity For Emotion Perception I...mentioning

confidence: 57%

Neuronal and behavioral affective perceptions of human and naturalness-reduced emotional prosodies

Duville

Alonso-Valerdi

Ibarra-Zárate

2022

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

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Artificial voices are nowadays embedded into our daily lives with latest neural voices approaching human voice consistency (naturalness). Nevertheless, behavioral, and neuronal correlates of the perception of less naturalistic emotional prosodies are still misunderstood. In this study, we explored the acoustic tendencies that define naturalness from human to synthesized voices. Then, we created naturalness-reduced emotional utterances by acoustic editions of human voices. Finally, we used Event-Related Potentials (ERP) to assess the time dynamics of emotional integration when listening to both human and synthesized voices in a healthy adult sample. Additionally, listeners rated their perceptions for valence, arousal, discrete emotions, naturalness, and intelligibility. Synthesized voices were characterized by less lexical stress (i.e., reduced difference between stressed and unstressed syllables within words) as regards duration and median pitch modulations. Besides, spectral content was attenuated toward lower F2 and F3 frequencies and lower intensities for harmonics 1 and 4. Both psychometric and neuronal correlates were sensitive to naturalness reduction. (1) Naturalness and intelligibility ratings dropped with emotional utterances synthetization, (2) Discrete emotion recognition was impaired as naturalness declined, consistent with P200 and Late Positive Potentials (LPP) being less sensitive to emotional differentiation at lower naturalness, and (3) Relative P200 and LPP amplitudes between prosodies were modulated by synthetization. Nevertheless, (4) Valence and arousal perceptions were preserved at lower naturalness, (5) Valence (arousal) ratings correlated negatively (positively) with Higuchi’s fractal dimension extracted on neuronal data under all naturalness perturbations, (6) Inter-Trial Phase Coherence (ITPC) and standard deviation measurements revealed high inter-individual heterogeneity for emotion perception that is still preserved as naturalness reduces. Notably, partial between-participant synchrony (low ITPC), along with high amplitude dispersion on ERPs at both early and late stages emphasized miscellaneous emotional responses among subjects. In this study, we highlighted for the first time both behavioral and neuronal basis of emotional perception under acoustic naturalness alterations. Partial dependencies between ecological relevance and emotion understanding outlined the modulation but not the annihilation of emotional integration by synthetization.

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“…A more direct way to assess implicit word representations may be to use EEG measures during the passive familiarization phase. Robust event related potentials have been reported for violations of words' transitional and phonotactic probabilities (e.g., Elmer et al, 2021;François et al, 2017). In an ongoing EEG study, we are measuring whether participants will show similar ERPs to violations of transitional and phonotactic information presented in the Balanced and in the Conflict languages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech segmentation and cross-situational word learning in parallel

Ben¹,

Prequero²,

Souza³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Language learners track conditional probabilities to find words in continuous speech and to map words and objects across ambiguous contexts. It remains unclear, however, whether learners can leverage the structure of the linguistic input to do both tasks at the same time and how that would impact learning. To explore these questions, we combined speech segmentation and cross-situational word learning into a single task. Participants had to track speech statistics (transitional and phonotactic probabilities) to segment words and, at the same time, track co-occurrences between these newly segmented words and objects across presentations to overcome ambiguity and learn word-object pairings. In Experiment 1, when adults (N = 60) simultaneously segmented continuous speech and mapped the newly segmented words to objects, they demonstrated better performance than when either task was performed alone. However, when the speech stream had conflicting information between transitional and phonotactic statistics, participants were still able to correctly map words to objects, but surprisingly, were at chance level on speech segmentation. In Experiment 2, we used a more sensitive speech segmentation measure to find that adults (N = 35), exposed to the same conflicting speech stream, correctly identified non-words as such, but were still unable to consistently discriminate between words and part-words. Again, mapping was above chance. Our study suggests that learners can track multiple sources of statistical information to find and map words to objects in complex environments. It also prompts critical questions on how to effectively measure the knowledge that may arise from these learning experiences.

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Statistical learning and prosodic bootstrapping differentially affect neural synchronization during speech segmentation

Cited by 15 publications

References 64 publications

The power of rhythms: how steady-state evoked responses reveal early neurocognitive development

The power of rhythms: how steady-state evoked responses reveal early neurocognitive development

Neuronal and behavioral affective perceptions of human and naturalness-reduced emotional prosodies

Speech segmentation and cross-situational word learning in parallel

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