L18 - understanding speech Flashcards
How does sound production work?
Vocal cords + mouth produce sound waves
Sound waves are captured by the ear + translated into neural signals
the brain processes these signals into phonemes which combine to form words + then sentences
what is categorical perception?
Listeners perceive phonemes categorically, meaning they hear subtly different sounds as the same phoneme and cannot distinguish between them
What’s the McGurk Effect?
Visual Influence: Hearing is affected by seeing.
Study: McGurk & MacDonald demonstrated that modified video showing a different phoneme than the one spoken can result in a third, different perceived phoneme (e.g., hearing “DA” when seeing “GA” and hearing “BA”).
What’s lexical ambiguity?
Different spoken sentences can be perceived differently based on context (e.g., “The stuffy nose can lead to problems” vs. “The stuff he knows can lead to problems”)
What’s cross-modal priming?
Hearing one word can aid in recognizing a subsequent visual word.
Example: Shillcock (1990) showed that people can perceive embedded words which become temporarily active and prime recognition of visual targets.
What’s the phoneme restoration effect?
Warren (1970):
Participants listened to sentences with a phoneme replaced by a cough. They were often unaware of the missing sound and incorrectly identified the missing phoneme.
Samuels (1981, 1987, 1990):
Investigated the timing and influence of context on phoneme restoration.
Findings: Context can influence both phoneme perception and decisions about corrupted words.
What’s the purpose of the computational models of speech processing?
Purpose: Psychologists design computer programs to mimic the workings of cognitive systems
What are the components of the TRACE Model
Auditory Features
Phonemes
Words
What is the function of the TRACE Model
Phonemes activate word candidates.
Candidates compete with each other.
The winning candidate completes the missing phoneme information.
