Speech perception and it's models

Question 1

Perception of vowels:

Answer 1

F2: the more anterior the vowel, the higher F2. The space in the cavity is smaller the more anterior the tongue is located

F1: the more open the vowel, the higher the F1. The space in the cavity is bigger the more open the vocal tract is

Vowels are perceived continuously

Question 2

Perception of consonants:

Answer 2

• Voiced stop consonants: syllable in initial position must contain a small piece of the transition segment into the adjacent vowel in order to be perceived accurately
• Vowel may have a stable appereance, but if it is pronounced with a consonant, the formant transition is altered up and down

Question 3

VOT (voice onset time) in stop consonants:

Answer 3

-voiced: vibration of the vocal folds simultaneously with the release of articulators
-unvoiced: vibration happening after a lag

VOT values are different in different languages

Question 4

MODELS OF SPEECH PERCEPTION

Motor theory of speech perception:

Answer 4

speech signals are interpreted by reference to articulatory speech gestures

Question 5

MODELS OF SPEECH PERCEPTION

McGurk effect:

Answer 5

illusion in which the mismatch between auditory information and visual information pertaining to a sound’s articulation results in altered perception of that sound

Question 6

MODELS OF SPEECH PERCEPTION

Fuzzy logic model:

Answer 6

Makes use of the idea of prototypes, which are summary descriptions of the perceptual units of language and contain a conjunction of various distinctive features

• Feature evaluation: degree to which each feature in the syllable matches the corresponding feature found in the prototype of memory
• Feature integration: the degree to which each prototype matches the syllable
• Feature decision: goodness of match is made and the proportion of time the syllable is identified as an instance of the prototype

Phonetic perception is a probabilistic adjustment process of matching features to prototype representations in memory

Question 7

CONTEXT EFFECT ON SPEECH PERCEPTION

Ganong effect:

Answer 7

listeners perceive the same ambiguous sound differently depending on which word it is embedded within

eg: an ambiguous sound between t and d will be perceived as t in the context of _ask but as d in the context of _ash

Question 8

CONTEXT EFFECT ON SPEECH PERCEPTION

Phonemic restoration:

Answer 8

Mind’s ability to fill in the missing phoneme based on the context that is presented.

Warren and Warren: cough paired with word “eel” if on a shoe “heel”, if on a table “meal”

Doesn’t work with silence
More likely if at the end of the word
Better with high frequency words