Task 9 speech perception

Question 1

Phoneme

Answer 1

: the shortest segment of speech that, if changed would change the meaning of the word

Question 2

Speech segmentation

Answer 2

the perception of individual words in a conversation
o Knowledge of meaning of words
o Some sounds are more likely to appear together within a word and other sounds are more likely to be separated by the space between two words
o Transitional properties: the chances that one sound will follow another sound

Question 3

Acoustic signal (production)

Answer 3

the movement of structures within the vocal apparatus, which produce patterns of pressure changes in the air

Question 4

Articulators (production)

Answer 4

due to moving of the articulators the vocal tract is shaped, includes tongue teeth, jaw and soft palate

Question 5

Vocal tract (production)

Answer 5

articulation, nasal and oral tract combined

Question 6

Vocal folds (production)

Answer 6

phonation, producing sound (vocal cords)

Question 7

Vowels

Answer 7

are produced by vibration of the vocal cords

Question 8

Formats (procduction)

Answer 8

the frequencies at which these peaks (pressure change) occur

Question 9

Consonants

Answer 9

produced by closing or constriction of the vocal tract

Question 10

Format transition (production)

Answer 10

rapid shifts in frequency preceding or following formats, consonants

Question 11

Motor theory of speech perception

Answer 11

 1. Hearing a particular speech sound activates motor mechanisms controlling the movement of the articulators that are responsible for producing sound
 2. Activation of these mechanisms enables us to perceive the sound

Question 12

Recognition

Answer 12

o Easier to perceive phenoms which are aligned in a meaningful context around 8% faster recognition

Question 13

Phonemic restoration effect

Answer 13

when a word is presented with a cough at a certain point and the letter was taken out the subjects could not tell at which point the cough was and didn’t recognized that the letter was actually missing, can be influenced by certain situations (Top down processing)
 Works best when the masking sound has the same frequency as the original letter

Question 14

Categorical speech perception

Answer 14

occurs when stimuli that exist along a continuum are perceived as divided into discrete categories
o Voice onset time: the time delay between when a sound begins and when the vocal cords begin vibrating
o Phonetic boundary: When the perception from e.g. da to ta changes (at 35ms) we perceive the phenoms different on each site of the boundary

Question 15

Multimodal perception

Answer 15

speech perception I multimodal that states that our perception can be influenced by visual information from a number of different senses

Question 16

McGurk effect

Answer 16

when we see a video where someone moves the lips according to ga-ga and we hear ba-ba we will perceive da-da

Question 17

Audiovisual speech perception

Answer 17

the influence of vision on auditory perception
o Might be neural mechanism behind because lip reading activates a different part of the audio-cortex also activates FFA when we know the voice of the person

Question 18

Voice area (cortical)

Answer 18

Are in the superior temporal sulcus, that reacts more to voices than to other sounds (part of ventral pathway)

Question 19

Voice cells (cortical)

Answer 19

detected in monkeys temporal lobe, they respond more strongly to monkey calls than to calls of other animals or to “non-voice sounds”

Question 20

What pathway

Answer 20

ventral pathway starting at the interior auditory cortex → interior temporal lobe → frontal cortex that responsible for recognizing speech (Brocas)

Question 21

Where/How pathway

Answer 21

dorsal pathway starting at the posterior auditory cortex → goes to parietal lobe → motor cortex that that is responsible for linking the acoustic signal to the movements used to produce speech

Question 22

Broca’s aphasia

Answer 22

They have laboured and stilted speech and can only speak in short sentences, they are still capable of understanding what others say (frontal lobe above lateral fissure)

Question 23

Wernicke aphasia

Answer 23

They can speak fluently but what they say is extremely disorganized and not meaningful. These patients have difficulties with understanding what others say (temporal lobe)
o Word deafness: an extreme form of Wernicke apahsia in which they cannot recognize words, even though the ability to hear pure tones remains intact

Question 24

Damage to parietal lobe

Answer 24

problems with discriminating syllables, some can still understand words

Question 25

Indexical characteristics

Answer 25

carries information about the speaker such as age, gender, place of origin, emotional state and if they are being sarcastic or serious
o Two levels of information about a word: 1: its meaning 2: characteristics of the speakers voice

Question 26

Audiovisual mirror neurons

Answer 26

These neurons fi re when a monkey carries out an action that produces a sound (like breaking a peanut) and when the monkey hears the sound (the sound of a breaking peanut) that results from the action

Question 27

Spectogram (speech)

Answer 27

time is length frequency is height, and amplitude is colour. Vowels have greater amplitude

Question 28

Coarticulation

Answer 28

the sounds are made differently depending on which sound precedes another (de and du) d is basically the same but the format is different, perceptual constancy

Question 29

Spectral contrast

Answer 29

Same sound different intensities, linked to brightness and contrast in vision, some contrasts are more likely to occur together, makes it easier to discriminate phonemes/words