W3 Speech Perception and Production Flashcards
What are the characteristics of speech as a stimulus?
Varies continuously over time, contains multiple types of information, is a continuous stream of sound, and phonemes sound different in different contexts.
What is the segmentation problem in speech perception?
The challenge of recognizing where one word ends and another begins, as sounds run together without clear boundaries.
What are allophones?
Variations in the pronunciation of a phoneme that do not change its meaning, such as different pronunciations of “t” in various contexts.
What is the invariance problem in speech perception?
Phonemes are not always pronounced or perceived the same way due to variations in surrounding sounds, speaker accents, and other factors.
What is categorical perception of phonemes?
The ability to perceive speech sounds as belonging to distinct categories despite variations in pronunciation.
Define the possible-word constraint in speech segmentation.
The tendency to segment speech in a way that maps onto whole, possible words.
What role does context play in identifying sounds or words?
Context influences the perception of words in speech, making single words easier to recognize when they are part of a sentence.
Describe the top-down processing in speech perception.
Using context and expectations to help decode individual words from the speech signal, which supplements the bottom-up information.
What did Warren & Warren’s (1970) experiment demonstrate?
Listeners could restore missing phonemes based on context, showing that expectations significantly affect perceptions of spoken words.
Outline the stages of spoken word recognition according to models of speech perception.
Initial contact (sensory input), selection phase, and integration of the word into the sentence context.
What does the Cohort model propose?
It proposes that we activate a cohort of possible words when hearing speech, eliminating options until one is recognized.
What are distinctive features (DFs) in phonetics?
Characteristics that uniquely describe each sound, such as voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
What is the Template Matching model?
A model suggesting that we recognize words by matching them to stored templates; however, it fails due to variability in speech.
Describe the TRACE model.
An interactive model of speech recognition emphasizing the role of top-down processing, where nodes represent sounds, words, and features.
What is the significance of voicing in speech sounds?
Voicing refers to whether vocal cords vibrate during the production of sounds; it differentiates between phonemes like /p/ and /b/.
