Task 9 - Speech Perception

Question 1

What is the acoustic signal in speech?

Answer 1

Patterns of pressure changes in the air produced by movement in the vocal tract.

Question 2

What structures shape the vocal tract during speech?

Answer 2

Articulators such as the tongue, lips, teeth, jaw, and soft palate.

Question 3

How are vowels produced?

Answer 3

By vibration of the vocal cords, with different formants created by shaping the vocal tract.

Question 4

What are formants?

Answer 4

Peaks of pressure at different frequencies that characterize vowel sounds.

Question 5

How are consonants produced?

Answer 5

By constriction of the vocal tract, altering airflow in specific ways.

Question 6

What are the three dimensions of consonant articulation?

Answer 6

Manner of articulation, place of articulation, and voicing.

Question 7

What is a sound spectrogram?

Answer 7

A visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in speech over time.

Question 8

What is a phoneme?

Answer 8

The smallest unit of speech that changes the meaning of a word.

Question 9

What is the variability problem in speech perception?

Answer 9

The same phoneme can be associated with different acoustic signals due to context and pronunciation differences.

Question 10

What is coarticulation?

Answer 10

The overlap of articulation between neighboring phonemes, affecting pronunciation.

Question 11

What is perceptual constancy in speech?

Answer 11

The ability to recognize phonemes consistently despite acoustic variability.

Question 12

What is categorical perception?

Answer 12

The perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories despite existing along a continuum.

Question 13

What is voice onset time (VOT)?

Answer 13

The time delay between the start of a sound and the vibration of the vocal cords.

Question 14

What is the phonetic boundary?

Answer 14

The point at which perception shifts from one phoneme to another along a VOT continuum.

Question 15

What is the phonemic restoration effect?

Answer 15

When the brain fills in missing phonemes in speech using context.

Question 16

How does knowledge of language influence speech perception?

Answer 16

We process meaningful words faster and use context to resolve ambiguity.

Question 17

What is speech segmentation?

Answer 17

The perception of individual words in a continuous speech stream.

Question 18

What is transitional probability in speech?

Answer 18

The likelihood that one sound follows another in a language.

Question 19

What is statistical learning in speech perception?

Answer 19

Learning patterns in speech, such as which sounds frequently occur together.

Question 20

What is the McGurk effect?

Answer 20

A visual-auditory illusion where seeing lip movements alters perceived speech sounds.

Question 21

What brain area is damaged in Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 21

Broca’s area in the frontal lobe.

Question 22

What are symptoms of Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 22

Slow, labored speech with grammatical errors and difficulty understanding complex sentences

Question 23

What brain area is damaged in Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 23

Wernicke’s area in the temporal lobe.

Question 24

What are symptoms of Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 24

Fluent but meaningless speech and difficulty understanding spoken and written language.

Question 25

What is word deafness?

Answer 25

The inability to recognize words, even though hearing pure tones remains intact.

Question 26

What are the two streams in the dual-stream model of speech perception?

Answer 26

The ventral stream (speech comprehension) and the dorsal stream (speech production & motor control).

Question 27

What is the role of the ventral stream in speech perception?

Answer 27

Processes speech meaning and connects sounds to comprehension.

Question 28

What is the role of the dorsal stream in speech perception?

Answer 28

Links speech sounds to motor movements, helping with speech production and imitation.

Question 29

How are speech perception and speech production related?

Answer 29

Shared brain mechanisms process both, and activity in one system can influence the other.

Question 30

How does face perception relate to speech perception?

Answer 30

Familiar voices activate the fusiform face area (FFA), linking voice recognition to face recognition.

Question 31

What are voice cells?

Answer 31

Neurons in the temporal lobe that respond strongly to monkey calls but not other animal sounds.

Question 32

How is speech represented in the brain?

Answer 32

Different areas respond to groups of phonemes, and population coding helps encode speech features

Question 33

What part of the brain processes speech before it becomes language?

Answer 33

Both hemispheres process speech sounds, but language-specific processing happens in the left superior temporal cortex.

Question 34

How does the brain adapt to phoneme variability across speakers?

Answer 34

By integrating auditory and visual cues and recognizing patterns in familiar voices.

Question 35

What is the main function of Wernicke’s area?

Answer 35

Understanding and processing speech meaning.

Question 36

What is the main function of Broca’s area?

Answer 36

Planning and producing speech sounds.

Question 37

What experiment showed that speech perception is multimodal?

Answer 37

An fMRI study found that watching silent mouth movements activated the auditory cortex, even without sound.

Question 38

What is the role of phonetic features in speech processing?

Answer 38

Different brain areas respond to different articulation types, such as voicing, manner, and place of articulation.

Question 39

What is manner of articulation?

Answer 39

How airflow is controlled when producing a speech sound (e.g., stops, fricatives, nasals).

Question 40

What is place of articulation?

Answer 40

The location in the vocal tract where airflow is restricted to produce a speech sound.

Question 41

What is voicing in speech sounds?

Answer 41

Whether the vocal cords vibrate during the production of a consonant sound.

Question 42

How does coarticulation affect speech perception?

Answer 42

It causes overlapping of phonemes, making them sound different depending on their context.

Question 43

What is an example of perceptual constancy in speech?

Answer 43

Recognizing a phoneme as the same despite differences in pronunciation (e.g., /d/ in "di" vs. "du").

Question 44

Why does categorical perception help in speech recognition?

Answer 44

It allows listeners to ignore small variations and perceive sounds as distinct categories.

Question 45

How do infants demonstrate categorical perception?

Answer 45

They can distinguish phonemes from different languages early on but lose this ability with age

Question 46

What is the importance of voice onset time (VOT)?

Answer 46

It differentiates between voiced and voiceless sounds (e.g., /b/ vs. /p/).

Question 47

How does speech segmentation work in fluent speech?

Answer 47

The brain uses context, phoneme knowledge, and transitional probabilities to recognize words.

Question 48

What experiment showed that infants use statistical learning in speech?

Answer 48

Babies learned to recognize word-like sequences from artificial speech streams based on sound patterns.

Question 49

How does knowledge of language affect phoneme perception?

Answer 49

Listeners detect phonemes faster in real words than in nonsense words.

Question 50

How does the McGurk effect demonstrate multisensory integration?

Answer 50

Vision and hearing interact, altering our perceived speech sound.

Question 51

What happens when Broca’s area is damaged?

Answer 51

The person has difficulty forming speech but can still understand it (Broca’s aphasia).

Question 52

What happens when Wernicke’s area is damaged?

Answer 52

The person can speak fluently but their speech is meaningless and they struggle to understand language.

Question 53

What is the primary function of the dorsal stream in speech processing?

Answer 53

It links speech perception with motor control, aiding speech production.

Question 54

What is the primary function of the ventral stream in speech processing?

Answer 54

It processes speech meaning and comprehension.

Question 55

How do the dorsal and ventral streams interact in speech?

Answer 55

They work together to integrate sound with meaning and motor control.

Question 56

What is the phonemic restoration effect an example of?

Answer 56

Top-down processing, where the brain fills in missing sounds based on context.

Question 57

What does fMRI reveal about speech perception and production?

Answer 57

Brain areas for both overlap, suggesting shared neural mechanisms.

Question 58

How does familiarity with a speaker affect speech perception?

Answer 58

It activates the fusiform face area (FFA), linking voice and face recognition.

Question 59

What are voice cells?

Answer 59

Neurons that respond strongly to speech sounds rather than non-speech noises.

Question 60

How do different areas of the temporal lobe process phonemes?

Answer 60

They respond to different phoneme groups and articulation features.