Tactual Speech Perception by Minimally Trained Deaf Subjects

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Kimbrough Oller ◽  
Shelley Lynn Payne ◽  
William J. Gavin

Research on tactual perception of speech has shown that many phonetic contrasts can be transmitted to the deaf through artificial hearing devices that stimulate the sense of touch. Past research has emphasized long-term training with tactual reception or the achievement of maximal perceptual performance. The present study demonstrates that, with a brief training period, deaf adolescents can attain a high level of perceptual performance with a tactual speech system in discrimination of certain hard-to-lipread word pairs pronounced by both a male and a female speaker. Thus some speech sounds previously indistinguishable by the deaf people can be immediately available for speech comprehension through the tactual vocoder; and other speech sounds will be recognized with further training. The reason that some contrasts are learned quickly and others require extensive training may be found in a pattern perception postulate proposed by Gavin (1979): word patterns that result in stimulation across a greater area of skin tend to be more discriminable than word patterns which stimulate only small areas of the skin.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Darshani Jai Kumareswaran

<p>The primary aim of this thesis was to understand some of the factors that make an individual more likely to ascribe to conspiracy theories. Ascription to conspiracy theories was conceptualised dimensionally along a continuum labelled Conspiracy Theory Affinity (CTA). Strong CTA reflects both a high level of belief in conspiracy theories and a tendency to create conspiracy theories (conspiracy theorising). To gauge this, I measured level of conspiracy belief, conspiracy pattern perception (conspiracy theory creation), as well as various forms of psychopathology. The findings of the psychopathology study (study 4) suggested that high conspiracy theory affinity individuals are more likely to present with high levels of paranoia, delusion, general mental pathology, as well as a high level and range of schizotypal traits. The conspiracy theory literature has also suggested that a lack of control is germane to development and maintenance of the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories (Abalakina-Paap et al., 1999; Douglas & Sutton, 2008; Groh, 1987; Hofstadter, 1965; Leman, 2007; Newheiser, Farias, & Tausch, 2011; Swami et al., 2013; Sullivan et al., 2010; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). The literature also suggests that one compensatory strategy commonly used to re-establish a semblance of control is illusory pattern perception. Illusory pattern perception or Apophenia, is when unrelated stimuli (either visual or situational) are perceived to be connected in some meaningful way. Therefore, I also sought to establish if a direct link between illusory pattern perception and CTA actually exists. In studies 1 and 2 I experimentally induced a sense of low control using methods that have proven effective in previous research. The findings of these studies suggested that a lack of control does not necessarily reflect that a person is more likely to engage in conspiracy pattern perception. However, the findings also suggested that when a low level of control is felt by an individual who also has a magical thinking style, they are more likely to demonstrate illusory visual pattern perception. Limitations of these studies and therefore their potential influence on interpretations of the findings were also considered. Another major research aim of this thesis was to elucidate how society perceives conspiracy theorists and how those with strong CTA perceive the label of conspiracy theorist. The findings of two studies (studies 3b and 5) revealed that the majority of respondents considered conspiracy theorists to be characteristically similar to those with current mental health concerns and also convicted criminals, and dissimilar to targets with resolved mental health issues and no current mental health issues (e.g. the average man). In contrast however, those with strong CTA rated the target Conspiracy Theorist significantly more favourably than those with low CTA. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings across these 5 studies are discussed, and methodological limitations are also acknowledged.</p>


2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Powis ◽  
Miles Bore ◽  
Donald Munro ◽  
Mary Ann Lumsden

A review of the medical student selection literature and our own past research (Lowe, Kerridge, Bore, Munro and Powis (2001) has indicated that competent and ethical practice of medicine requires doctors to possess a range of personal qualities in addition to high-level academic ability. A three-part test battery called the Personal Qualities Assessment (PQA) has been developed as a measure of some of these qualities: it consists of the Mental Agility Test (MAT), which measures cognitive skills, the Mojac scale, which measures moral orientation, and the NACE scale, which measures Narcissism, Aloofness, Confidence and Empathy. Five hundred and seven applicants for entry in October 2003 to the Scottish medical schools volunteered to complete the MAT, Mojac and NACE tests in January 2003. The test results played no part in making or informing selection decisions. The scores obtained by the candidates on each test covered a wide range, indicating that each test component has good discriminating power. Correlations between the test components were low (−0.02 to +0.17), indicating that they each measure different attributes. Since the test results were not used in making selection decisions it will be possible to relate outcome indices (e.g., examination and professional performance as the students progress through medical school) to the test component scores to seek evidence for the predictive validity of the PQA battery and thereby indicate its potential usefulness as a selection tool.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 942-951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lanfang Liu ◽  
Yuxuan Zhang ◽  
Qi Zhou ◽  
Douglas D Garrett ◽  
Chunming Lu ◽  
...  

Abstract Whether auditory processing of speech relies on reference to the articulatory motor information of speaker remains elusive. Here, we addressed this issue under a two-brain framework. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was applied to record the brain activities of speakers when telling real-life stories and later of listeners when listening to the audio recordings of these stories. Based on between-brain seed-to-voxel correlation analyses, we revealed that neural dynamics in listeners’ auditory temporal cortex are temporally coupled with the dynamics in the speaker’s larynx/phonation area. Moreover, the coupling response in listener’s left auditory temporal cortex follows the hierarchical organization for speech processing, with response lags in A1+, STG/STS, and MTG increasing linearly. Further, listeners showing greater coupling responses understand the speech better. When comprehension fails, such interbrain auditory-articulation coupling vanishes substantially. These findings suggest that a listener’s auditory system and a speaker’s articulatory system are inherently aligned during naturalistic verbal interaction, and such alignment is associated with high-level information transfer from the speaker to the listener. Our study provides reliable evidence supporting that references to the articulatory motor information of speaker facilitate speech comprehension under a naturalistic scene.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Gwilliams ◽  
Tal Linzen ◽  
David Poeppel ◽  
Alec Marantz

AbstractSpeech is an inherently noisy and ambiguous signal. In order to fluently derive meaning, a listener must integrate contextual information to guide interpretations of the sensory input. While many studies have demonstrated the influence of prior context on speech perception, the neural mechanisms supporting the integration of subsequent context remain unknown. Using magnetoencephalography, we analysed responses to spoken words with a varyingly ambiguous onset phoneme, the identity of which is later disambiguated at the lexical uniqueness point1. Our findings suggest that primmary auditory cortex is sensitive to phonological ambiguity very early during processing — at just 50 ms after onset. Subphonemic detail is preserved in auditory cortex over long timescales, and re-evoked at subsequent phoneme positions. Commitments to phonological categories occur in parallel, resolving on the shorter time-scale of ~450 ms. These findings provide evidence that future input determines the perception of earlier speech sounds by maintaining sensory features until they can be integrated with top down lexical information.Significance statementThe perception of a speech sound is determined by its surrounding context, in the form of words, sentences, and other speech sounds. Often, such contextual information becomes available later than the sensory input. The present study is the first to unveil how the brain uses this subsequent information to aid speech comprehension. Concretely, we find that the auditory system supports prolonged access to the transient acoustic signal, while concurrently making guesses about the identity of the words being said. Such a processing strategy allows the content of the message to be accessed quickly, while also permitting re-analysis of the acoustic signal to minimise parsing mistakes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingcan Carol Wang ◽  
Ediz Sohoglu ◽  
Rebecca A. Gilbert ◽  
Richard N. Henson ◽  
Matthew H. Davis

AbstractHuman listeners achieve quick and effortless speech comprehension through computations of conditional probability using Bayes rule. However, the neural implementation of Bayesian perceptual inference remains unclear. Competitive-selection accounts (e.g. TRACE) propose that word recognition is achieved through direct inhibitory connections between units representing candidate words that share segments (e.g. hygiene and hijack share /haid3/). Manipulations that increase lexical uncertainty should increase neural responses associated with word recognition when words cannot be uniquely identified (during the first syllable). In contrast, predictive-selection accounts (e.g. Predictive-Coding) proposes that spoken word recognition involves comparing heard and predicted speech sounds and using prediction error to update lexical representations. Increased lexical uncertainty in words like hygiene and hijack will increase prediction error and hence neural activity only at later time points when different segments are predicted (during the second syllable). We collected MEG data to distinguish these two mechanisms and used a competitor priming manipulation to change the prior probability of specific words. Lexical decision responses showed delayed recognition of target words (hygiene) following presentation of a neighbouring prime word (hijack) several minutes earlier. However, this effect was not observed with pseudoword primes (higent) or targets (hijure). Crucially, MEG responses in the STG showed greater neural responses for word-primed words after the point at which they were uniquely identified (after /haid3/ in hygiene) but not before while similar changes were again absent for pseudowords. These findings are consistent with accounts of spoken word recognition in which neural computations of prediction error play a central role.Significance StatementEffective speech perception is critical to daily life and involves computations that combine speech signals with prior knowledge of spoken words; that is, Bayesian perceptual inference. This study specifies the neural mechanisms that support spoken word recognition by testing two distinct implementations of Bayes perceptual inference. Most established theories propose direct competition between lexical units such that inhibition of irrelevant candidates leads to selection of critical words. Our results instead support predictive-selection theories (e.g. Predictive-Coding): by comparing heard and predicted speech sounds, neural computations of prediction error can help listeners continuously update lexical probabilities, allowing for more rapid word identification.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (29) ◽  
pp. 16920-16927 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Plass ◽  
David Brang ◽  
Satoru Suzuki ◽  
Marcia Grabowecky

Visual speech facilitates auditory speech perception, but the visual cues responsible for these benefits and the information they provide remain unclear. Low-level models emphasize basic temporal cues provided by mouth movements, but these impoverished signals may not fully account for the richness of auditory information provided by visual speech. High-level models posit interactions among abstract categorical (i.e., phonemes/visemes) or amodal (e.g., articulatory) speech representations, but require lossy remapping of speech signals onto abstracted representations. Because visible articulators shape the spectral content of speech, we hypothesized that the perceptual system might exploit natural correlations between midlevel visual (oral deformations) and auditory speech features (frequency modulations) to extract detailed spectrotemporal information from visual speech without employing high-level abstractions. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that the time–frequency dynamics of oral resonances (formants) could be predicted with unexpectedly high precision from the changing shape of the mouth during speech. When isolated from other speech cues, speech-based shape deformations improved perceptual sensitivity for corresponding frequency modulations, suggesting that listeners could exploit this cross-modal correspondence to facilitate perception. To test whether this type of correspondence could improve speech comprehension, we selectively degraded the spectral or temporal dimensions of auditory sentence spectrograms to assess how well visual speech facilitated comprehension under each degradation condition. Visual speech produced drastically larger enhancements during spectral degradation, suggesting a condition-specific facilitation effect driven by cross-modal recovery of auditory speech spectra. The perceptual system may therefore use audiovisual correlations rooted in oral acoustics to extract detailed spectrotemporal information from visual speech.


Phonology ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Dogil ◽  
Jörg Mayer

The present study proposes a new interpretation of the underlying distortion in APRAXIA OF SPEECH. Apraxia of speech, in its pure form, is the only neurolinguistic syndrome for which it can be argued that phonological structure is selectively distorted.Apraxia of speech is a nosological entity in its own right which co-occurs with aphasia only occasionally. This…conviction rests on detailed descriptions of patients who have a severe and lasting disorder of speech production in the absence of any significant impairment of speech comprehension, reading or writing as well as of any significant paralysis or weakness of the speech musculature.(Lebrun 1990: 380)Based on the experimental investigation of poorly coarticulated speech of patients from two divergent languages (German and Xhosa) it is argued that apraxia of speech has to be seen as a defective implementation of phonological representations at the phonology–phonetics interface. We contend that phonological structure exhibits neither a homogeneously auditory pattern nor a motor pattern, but a complex encoding of sequences of speech sounds. Specifically, it is maintained that speech is encoded in the brain as a sequence of distinctive feature configurations. These configurations are specified with differing degrees of detail depending on the role the speech segments they underlie play in the phonological structure of a language. The transfer between phonological and phonetic representation encodes speech sounds as a sequence of vocal tract configurations. Like the distinctive feature representation, these configurations may be more or less specified. We argue that the severe and lasting disorders in speech production observed in apraxia of speech are caused by the distortion of this transfer between phonological and phonetic representation. The characteristic production deficits of apraxic patients are explained in terms of overspecification of phonetic representations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. I. Lisovets

A flora is a very plastic component of biovariety, especially on the urbanized territories with active development of transport, trade and different communications. From literary data on territory of Ukraine only from North America for the last 25 years about 30 new species that appeared quarantine plants got with various loads. In the flora of the Dnipropetrovsk area it is counted no less than 75 adentitious species, 102 species are cultivated and have a tendency to naturalization. In connection with the high level of urbanization the amount of adentitious and synanthropic species in a region increases constantly. Appearance of new species on any territory claims attention of researchers, in fact they can appear in a prospect dangerous for agricultural lands and natural ecosystems by reason of high competitiveness in the conditions of absence of natural wreckers. A base method for the study of regional flora is taking the inventory of species, it meens making lists of plants as a result of rout geobotanical researches. For determination of new species we used "Flora of the USSR" (1949), consultations were conducted with the known florists. Family Euphorbiaceae Juss. according to a determinant "Opredelitel… " (1987) is presented in our country by 6 genuses and 62 species. By us it is first found on territory of the Dnipropetrovsk area two representatives of  Euphorbiaceae – Acalypha australis L. and Euphorbia maculata L. Both species are educed within the limits of Bagleyskiy district of Dniprodzerzhynsk. Acalypha australis is an one-year plant with a thin root and direct ramified ribbed stem, a kind is widespread in Manchuria, Korea, north China, Japan, America, in the former USSR – on Caucasus and Far East. His characteristic habitats are sands on the banks of the rivers, the clay are washed off slopes, near-by building, on trashes, in sowing. In the determinants of Ukraine Acalypha australis is absent, however on literary information first found in 1981 in Crimea, later in Odesa and near-by Luhansk. The population of Acalypha australis is educed on Dnipropetrovsk region to be under a supervision from 2006. First Acalypha australis was found here on a flower-garden in a private sector, where, probably, was brought with the seed of decorative plants. The quantity of individuals did not exceed two ten that grew on an area approximately one meter square. For 9 the area of population considerably increased and now presents no less than 200 м2. Shoots of Acalypha australis appears at the end of May, flowering takes place in July–August, fruiting – in August–September.  A plant is weeded as ordinary weed, however it spreads successfully. To our opinion, it is related to the unpretentiousness of new kind to the terms of fertility and moisture of soil and high enough fruitfulness – from literary data to 100 seed from one individual. The representatives of the educed population grow on flower-gardens, along a fence and building, on beds among parsley, dill, strawberry, under a vine, in a hothouse with cucumbers. The domestic breeds of birds (chickens, geese) this kind do not eat. Euphorbia maculata is one-year old plant in a 10–20 cm high, with hard hairsprings. A kind takes place from North America, it as skidding is widespread in Europe, in the former USSR – in Western Transcaucasia and on Far East. His characteristic habitats are sands on the coasts of seas, embankments along roads. On territory of Ukraine Euphorbia maculata in determinants is absent, however on literary information led for Lviv and Crimea. The population of  Euphorbia maculata on Dnipropetrovsk region was educed by us in 2010 near-by a recreation centre "Himik" (Dniprodzerzhynsk). A kind prevails on a wide sidewalk ground before a centre, sprouting on the small areas of soil between concrete flags on an area about 3000 m2. In a vegetable cover except Euphorbia maculata we discovered Polygonum aviculare L., Portulaca oleraceа L., Eragrostis minor Host. On information of workers of recreation centre "Himik", Euphorbia maculata grows here already no less than 6, thus these plants weed every summer. Existing in such terms, a kind appears very proof to trampling down and unpretentious to the food value and humidity of soil. Morphologically it is near to Polygonum aviculare and Portulaca oleraceа, from the last it easily differs by the presence of milk juice in all parts of plant. On flower-gardens and lawns that abut upon a sidewalk ground, Euphorbia maculata is not educed. The standards of herbarium of the registered new species are kept in the Scientific herbarium of the Dnipropetrovsk national university of the name Oles Gonchar (DSU). With the purpose of prognostication of adaptation possibilities and speed of distribution on Dnipropetrovsk Oblast of Acalypha australis and Euphorbia maculata we deem it wise to undertake scalene studies of the educed populations, in particular population structure, varying of morphological indexes, germination of seed, allelopathic activity in the conditions of steppe Pridneprove. 


1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Broen ◽  
Winifred Strange ◽  
Shirley S. Doyle ◽  
James H. Heller

Disagreement exists concerning the relationship between the perception of phonetic contrasts and their production by both normal and articulation-delayed children. The perception of three approximant consonant contrasts (/w/-/r/,/w/-/l/, /r/-/1/) was examined in two groups of 3-year-old children: Normal children who did and did not articulate /r/ and /1/ correctly and articulation-delayed children who misarticulated /r/ and /1/. Perception was assessed in a two-choice forced-choice identification task in which the subjects heard a word and pushed a button lighting a picture corresponding to the word. In general, normally developing children were highly accurate in their perception of all three contrasts, but there was more variability in /w/-/1/ perceptual performance among the children who neutralized the/w/-/1/contrast. Articulation-delayed children displayed a wider range of production patterns and were more variable in their perceptual performance than normally developing children. Results suggest that normally developing children learn to perceive approximant contrasts prior to 3 years of age. However, some but not all articulation-delayed 3-year-old children may still make errors in the perception of approximants.


2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Swan ◽  
Emily Myers

Adults tend to perceive speech sounds from their native language as members of distinct and stable categories; however, they fail to perceive differences between many non-native speech sounds without a great deal of training. The present study investigates the effects of categorization training on adults’ ability to discriminate non-native phonetic contrasts. It was hypothesized that only individuals who successfully learned the appropriate categories would show selective improvements in discriminating between-category contrasts. Participants were trained to categorize progressively narrow phonetic contrasts across one of two non-native boundaries, with discrimination pre- and post-tests completed to measure the effects of training on participants’ perceptual sensitivity. Results suggest that changes in adults’ ability to discriminate a non-native contrast depend on their successful learning of the relevant category structure. Furthermore, post-training identification functions show that changes in perceptual categories specifically correspond to their relative placement of the category boundary. Taken together, these results indicate that learning to assign category labels to a non-native speech continuum is sufficient to induce discontinuous perception of between- versus within-category contrasts.


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