Speech and Hearing

Question 1

What is the frequency range of human hearing?

Answer 1

20 to 20,000 Hz

Question 2

What are the 3 main parts of the human ear?

Answer 2

outer, middle and inner ear

Question 3

What is the outer ear composed of?

Answer 3

pinna and meatus (ear canal)

Question 4

What is the role of the pinna?

Answer 4

affects the sound by the interference of sound waves through their reflection off the different structures; the brain interprets this as direction

Question 5

What is the role of the meatus?

Answer 5

links the pinna to the ear drum so waves are transmitted more efficiently to the cochlea

Question 6

What is the middle ear composed of?

Answer 6

3 ossicles; the malleus (hammer), incus (anvil) and stapes (stirrup)

Question 7

What is the role of the middle ear?

Answer 7

transmits vibrations from the eardrum using impedance matching to the vibrations are moe efficiently transmitted

Question 8

What is the inner ear composed of?

Answer 8

the cochlea, organ of corti, stereocilia,

Question 9

What is the function of the cochlea?

Answer 9

transforms a mechanical signal into neuronal responses in the 8th cranial nerve (snail shaped)

Question 10

What is the function of the organ of corti?

Answer 10

separates the inner and outer hair cells

Question 11

What separates the endolymph and perilymph?

Answer 11

the basilar membrane

Question 12

What is place theory?

Answer 12

neurons along the basilar membrane are only excited by specific frequencies; tonotopic organisation

Question 13

What is temporal theory?

Answer 13

auditory nerves tend to fire at the same phase of the stimulating waveform independent of position along the basilar membrane

Question 14

What is coding of intensity?

Answer 14

the louder the sound is the more frequently the auditory nerve fires

Question 15

What are the components of the larynx?

Answer 15

cricoid cartilage, thyroid cartilage, hyoid complex and epiglottis

Question 16

What does the epiglottis do?

Answer 16

prevents food getting into the larynx

Question 17

What is phonation?

Answer 17

cyclic opening and closing of the glottis which generates a sound; glottal wave

Question 18

What is the fundamental frequency?

Answer 18

the lowest parallel frequency component, this determines the pitch of the tone

Question 19

What determines an individuals natural speaking pitch?

Answer 19

longer, heavier vocal folds will produce a lower pitch

Question 20

How are vowel sounds perceived?

Answer 20

formant frequencies produce different amounts of excitation at different places along the basilar membrane

Question 21

What are the types of consonants?

Answer 21

bilabials, labio-dentals, alveolar, palatal and velar

Question 22

What is categorical perception?

Answer 22

when a change in some variables along a continuum is not perceived as gradual but as instances of discrete categories

Question 23

What is a phone?

Answer 23

a particular sound used by any language

Question 24

What is a phoneme?

Answer 24

a sound used in contrast to another in a particular language

Question 25

What is a morpheme?

Answer 25

a group of phonetic sounds which speakers of the same language perceive as the sae sound

Question 26

What is multimodal speech perception?

Answer 26

integration of visual and auditory cues

Question 27

What is the Chomsky/Gould theory of language evolution?

Answer 27

language could not have evolved through natural selection but as a by-product of selection for other abilities

Question 28

What is Pinker’s theory of language evolution?

Answer 28

natural selection is more than sufficient to explain the evolution of the entirety of human language

Question 29

What are the 4 main stages of human species development?

Answer 29

ardipithecus
australopithecus
paranthropus
homosapien

Question 30

What change in brain size takes place during language and speech development?

Answer 30

an increase in brain size is an essential prerequisite for the emergence of human language

Question 31

Why has brain size increased with human evolution?

Answer 31

Machiavellian Intelligence/social brain

Scheherazade effect

Question 32

Why would Machiavellian Intelligence lead to an increased brain size?

Answer 32

the result of selective pressures favouring individuals capable of dealing with increasingly complex social relationships

Question 33

Why does the Scheherazade effect lead to increased brain size?

Answer 33

verbal skills are an indicator of gene quality selected for sexual selection

Question 34

What is the role of the prefrontal cortex in speech?

Answer 34

plays a critical role in planning and decision making of what to say and how to say it

Question 35

What do mirror neurons do?

Answer 35

mirror neurons fire both when an animal performs a particular movement and when it observes another animal perform this movement

Question 36

What is a cortico-laryngeal connection?

Answer 36

a direct connection to the laryngeal motor neurons that control larynx muscles; only humans have this

Question 37

What is the function of Broca’s area?

Answer 37

speech production

Question 38

What is the functions of Wernicke’s area?

Answer 38

speech perception

Question 39

How is breathing without speech controlled?

Answer 39

by using the diaphragm and the vagus nerve

Question 40

How is air pressure in the trachea controlled?

Answer 40

by the thorax and abdomen

Question 41

What are the theories of vocalisation evolution?

Answer 41

ding-dong
pooh-pooh
bow-wow

Question 42

What is ding-dong theory?

Answer 42

vocalisations developed from onomatopoeia; the imitation of nature sounds

Question 43

What is pooh-pooh theory?

Answer 43

vocalisations developed from the imitation of internal states

Question 44

What is bow-wow theory?

Answer 44

language developed from the imitation of other species calls