Chapter 13

Question 1

Acoustic Signal/Stimulus

Answer 1

The pattern of frequencies and intensities of the sound stimulus

Question 2

Aphasia

Answer 2

Difficulties in speaking or understanding speech due to brain damage.

Question 3

Articulator

Answer 3

Structure involved in speech production, such as the tongue, lips, teeth, jaw, and soft palate.

Question 4

Audiovisual Speech Perception

Answer 4

A perception of speech that is affected by both auditory and visual stimulation, as when a person sees a tape of someone saying /ga/ with the sound /ba/ substituted and perceives /da/. Also called McGurk effect.

Question 5

Broca’s Aphasia

Answer 5

Language problems, caused by damage to Broca’s area in the frontal lobe, characterized by laboured and stilted speech and short sentences.

Question 6

Broca’s Area

Answer 6

An area in the frontal lobe that is important for language perception and production. One effect of damage is difficulty in speaking.

Question 7

Categorical Perception

Answer 7

Perceiving one sound at short voice onset times and another sound at longer voice onset times. The listener perceives only two categories across the whole range of voice onset times.

Question 8

Coarticulation

Answer 8

Overlapping articualtion that occurs when different phonemes follow one another in speech. Because of these effects the same phoneme can be articualted differently depending on the context i.e. /b/ in boat and boot.

Question 9

Dual-stream Model of Speech Perception

Answer 9

Proposes a ventral stream starting in the temporal lobe that is responsible for recognizing speech, and a dorsal stream starting in the parietal lobe that is responsible for linking the acoustical signal to the movements used to produce speech.

Question 10

Formant

Answer 10

Horizontal band of energy in the speech spectogram associated with vowels.

Question 11

Formant Transitions

Answer 11

In the speech stimulus, the rapid shift in frequency that precedes a formant.

Question 12

Indexical Characteristic

Answer 12

Characteristic of the speech stimulus that indicates information about a speaker, such as their age, gender, or emotional state.

Question 13

McGurk Effect

Answer 13

A perception of speech that is affected by both auditory and visual stimulation, as when a person sees a tape of someone saying /ga/ with the sound /ba/ substituted and perceives /da/. Also called audiovisual speech perception.

Question 14

Motor Theory of Speech Perception

Answer 14

Proposes a close link between how speech is perceived and how it is produced. The idea behind this theory is that when we hear a particualr speech sound, this activates the motor mechanisms that are responsible for producing that sound, and it is the activation of these motor mechanisms that allow us to perceive the sound.

Question 15

Multimodal

Answer 15

Involvement of a number of different senses in determining perception. Speech perception can be influenced by audition, vision and touch.

Question 16

Phoneme

Answer 16

The shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of the word.

Question 17

Phonemic Restoration Effect

Answer 17

Effect that occurs in speech perception when listeners perceive a phoneme in a word even though the acoustic signal of that phoneme is obscured by another sound, such as white noise or a cough.

Question 18

Phonetic Boundary

Answer 18

The voice onset time when perception changes from one speech category to another in a categorical perception experiment.

Question 19

Shadowing

Answer 19

Listeners’ repetition aloud of what they hear as they are hearing it.

Question 20

Sound Spectogram

Answer 20

A plot showing the pattern of intensities and frequencies of a speech stimulus.

Question 21

Speech Segmentation

Answer 21

The process of perceiving individual words from the continuous flow of the speech signal.

Question 22

Statistical Learning

Answer 22

Process of learning about transitional probabilities and other characteristics of the environment. Statistical learning for properties of language has been demonstrated in young infants.

Question 23

Transitional Probabilities

Answer 23

In language, the chances that one sound will follow another. Part of learning a language involves learning transitional probabilities in that language.

Question 24

Voice Cells

Answer 24

Neurons in the temporal lobe that respond more strongly to same-species voices than to calls of other animalsor to “non-voice” sounds.

Question 25

Voice Onset Time (VOT)

Answer 25

In speech production, the time delay between the beginning of a sound and the beginning of vibration of the vocal chords.

Question 26

Wernicke’s Aphasia

Answer 26

An inability to comprehend words or arrange sounds into coherent speech, caused by damage to Wernicke’s area.

Question 27

Wernicke’s Area

Answer 27

An area in the temporal lobe involved in speech perception. Damage to this area causes Wernicke’s aphasia, which is characterized by difficuly in understanding speech.

Question 28

Word Deafness

Answer 28

Occurs in most extreme form of Wernicke’s aphasia, when a person cannot recognize words, even though the ability to hear pure tones remains intact.