17. Intro to Speech Perception

Question 1

Speech sounds as changes in what?

Answer 1

Sound pressure resulting from vocal movements

Question 2

Speech sounds are often referred to as phonemes. What are phonemes?

Answer 2

Phonemes are the smallest units of speech that convey meaning

Question 3

Vocal chords (source) are important for what two things?

Answer 3

Pitch and intonation

Question 4

The supra laryngeal vocal tract (filter) is important for what?

Answer 4

Producing different speech sounds

Question 5

Your brain knows what vowel its hearing by detecting what?

Answer 5

Auditory patterns

Question 6

Second and third f____ are important for identifying consonants

Answer 6

formants

Question 7

Define categorical perception

Answer 7

The tendency to perceive gradual sensory changes in a discrete fashion

Question 8

Why are three hallmarks of categorical predictors?

Answer 8

1. Abrupt change in identification at phoneme boundary
2. Discrimination peak at phoneme boundary
3. Discrimination predicted from identification

Question 9

Filtering of vocal tract appears as bands of energy at certain frequencies called ‘formants’ (in Latin, “formare” = “to shape”).
Which formants are the most important for speech intelligibility?

Answer 9

Lowest three formant frequencies are the most important for speech intelligibility (labelled F1, F2 and F3)