Categorical Perception of Speech Sounds via the Tactile Mode

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 594-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jane Collins ◽  
Richard R. Hurtig
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Tactile Stimulation ◽  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Tactile Perception ◽  
Speech Signals ◽  
Speech Sounds

The usefulness of tactile devices as aids to lipreading has been established. However, maximum usefulness in reducing the ambiguity of lipreading cues and/or use of tactile devices as a substitute for audition may be dependent on phonemic recognition via tactile signals alone. In the present study, a categorical perception paradigm was used to evaluate tactile perception of speech sounds in comparison to auditory perception. The results show that speech signals delivered by tactile stimulation can be categorically perceived on a voice-onset time (VOT) continuum. The boundary for the voiced-voiceless distinction falls at longer VOTs for tactile than for auditory perception. It is concluded that the procedure is useful for determining characteristics of tactile perception and for prosthesis evaluation.

Categorical Perception of Pitch Contours and Voice Onset Time in Mandarin-Speaking Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Fei Chen ◽  
Gang Peng
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Adolescents With Asd

Purpose Previous studies have shown enhanced pitch and impaired time perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether such deviated patterns of auditory processing depending on acoustic dimensions would transfer to the higher level linguistic pitch and time processing. In this study, we compared the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method The data were collected from 22 Mandarin-speaking adolescents with ASD and 20 age-matched neurotypical controls. In addition to the identification and discrimination tasks to test CP performance, all the participants were evaluated with their language ability and phonological working memory. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different groups and conditions. Results The basic CP pattern of cross-boundary benefit when perceiving both native lexical tones and VOT was largely preserved in high-functioning adolescents with ASD. The degree of CP of lexical tones in ASD was similar to that in typical controls, whereas the degree of CP of VOT in ASD was greatly reduced. Furthermore, the degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with language ability and digit span in ASD participants. Conclusions These findings suggest that the unbalanced acoustic processing capacities for pitch and time can be generalized to the higher level linguistic processing in ASD. Furthermore, the higher degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with better language ability in Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD.

Stop consonant productions of Korean–English bilingual children

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUE ANN S. LEE ◽  
GREGORY K. IVERSON
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Stop Consonant ◽  
Developmental Period ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Stop Consonants ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
English Bilingual

The purpose of this study was to conduct an acoustic examination of the obstruent stops produced by Korean–English bilingual children in connection with the question of whether bilinguals establish distinct categories of speech sounds across languages. Stop productions were obtained from ninety children in two age ranges, five and ten years: thirty Korean–English bilinguals, thirty monolingual Koreans and thirty monolingual English speakers. Voice-Onset-Time (VOT) lag at word-initial stop and fundamental frequency (f0) in the following vowel (hereafter vowel-onset f0) were measured. The bilingual children showed different patterns of VOT in comparison to both English and Korean monolinguals, with longer VOT in their production of Korean stop consonants and shorter VOT for English. Moreover, the ten-year-old bilinguals distinguished all stop categories using both VOT and vowel-onset f0,whereas the five-year-olds tended to make stop distinctions based on VOT but not vowel-onset f0. The results of this study suggest that bilingual children at around five years of age do not yet have fully separate stop systems, and that the systems continue to evolve during the developmental period.

Effects of Age of Learning on Voice Onset Time: Categorical Perception of Swedish Stops by Near-native L2 Speakers

2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Stölten ◽  
Niclas Abrahamsson ◽  
Kenneth Hyltenstam
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time

Changes in Sensory Evoked Responses Coincide with Rapid Improvement in Speech Identification Performance

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Alain ◽  
Sandra Campeanu ◽  
Kelly Tremblay
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Learning ◽  
Auditory Evoked Potentials ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Broadband Noise ◽  
Evoked Responses ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Noise Stimulus ◽  
Sensory Evoked ◽  
Speech Identification

Perceptual learning is sometimes characterized by rapid improvements in performance within the first hour of training (fast perceptual learning), which may be accompanied by changes in sensory and/or response pathways. Here, we report rapid physiological changes in the human auditory system that coincide with learning during a 1-hour test session in which participants learned to identify two consonant vowel syllables that differed in voice onset time. Within each block of trials, listeners were also presented with a broadband noise control stimulus to determine whether changes in auditory evoked potentials were specific to the trained speech cue. The ability to identify the speech sounds improved from the first to the fourth block of trials and remained relatively constant thereafter. This behavioral improvement coincided with a decrease in N1 and P2 amplitude, and these learning-related changes differed from those observed for the noise stimulus. These training-induced changes in sensory evoked responses were followed by an increased negative peak (between 275 and 330 msec) over fronto-central sites and by an increase in sustained activity over the parietal regions. Although the former was also observed for the noise stimulus, the latter was specific to the speech sounds. The results are consistent with a top–down nonspecific attention effect on neural activity during learning as well as a more learning-specific modulation, which is coincident with behavioral improvements in speech identification.

Voice-onset Time and Tone-onset Time: The Role of Criterion-setting Mechanisms in Categorical Perception

1995 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Treisman ◽  
Andrew Faulkner ◽  
Peter L. N. Naish ◽  
Burton S. Rosner
Keyword(s):  
Signal Detection Theory ◽  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Tone Onset ◽  
Sequential Dependencies ◽  
Setting Theory ◽  
Criterion Setting

Problems in modelling categorical perception (CP) and attempts to apply signal detection theory (SDT) to CP are reviewed. An approach based on SDT supplemented by a theory of criterion setting is presented. Criterion setting theory (CST) postulates mechanisms that reset the response criterion on each trial, and it accounts for sequential dependencies. A criterion setting model for discrimination is shown to fit data from the literature. The hypothesis that “sharp” category boundaries may arise from the suppression of noise caused by intertrial dependencies was examined in an experiment on the identification of [ba] and [pa] syllables, and tone combinations of varying tone-onset time. However, it was shown that both positive and negative intertrial dependencies were present. They could be fitted by the criterion-setting model; in this respect, CP resembles standard psychophysical judgements. Examination of the psychometric functions from the two CP tasks shows that they are not normal ogives, as in standard psychophysical tasks: these curves are steeper centrally and flatter at the extremes than a Gaussian ogive; we describe them as “hypersigmoid”. The description of CP identification functions as hypersigmoid provides a new, qualitative characterization of the “sharp” category boundaries traditionally claimed for CP. Their causation remains to be determined.

scholarly journals A Contrastive Study of the Voice Onset Time (VOT) in English and Arabic Languages

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (118) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Rafida  Mansoor Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
Auditory System ◽  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Stop Consonants ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Human Auditory System ◽  
Arabic And English ◽  
The Voice

  The signal sound contains many different features. One of these features is voice onset time henceforth )VOT) and this feature refers to the ways different people of different languages have been distinguished by the way they articulate stop consonants of their own language. This feature (VOT) can be utilized by the human auditory system to distinguish between voiced and devoiced stops such as /p/ and /b /in English, /t/ and /t?/ Arabic. The study is contributed into five sections:- Section One is introductory, which contains the introduction, the problem, the hypothesis, the aim, the limitation and the value of the study. Section Two shows the definitions and types of VOT: positive, negative, zero VOT and role of VOT. Section Three deals with the measurement and categorical perception of VOT, these ways of measurements are spectrograms, waveform and lagtime. Section Four investigates the VOT of two languages, Arabic and English in details with a comparison between these two languages. It ends with a number of conclusions. One of these conclusions is that Arabic VOT is different from English VOT and this approved the hypothesis.

Speech discrimination in the language-innocent and the language-wise: a study in the perception of voice onset time

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca E. Eilers ◽  
Wesley R. Wilson ◽  
John M. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Speech Discrimination ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Innateness Hypothesis ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Time Continuum

ABSTRACTDiscrimination of synthetically produced stimuli differing along the voice onset time continuum was assessed for infants and adults within the context of the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) paradigm. English-learning infants' discrimination abilities were compared with two groups of English-speaking adults (a phonetically naive and a phonetically sophisticated group). Contrary to the predictions of the innateness hypothesis, English-learning infants showed evidence of discrimination only across the English phoneme boundary. Adults, on the other hand, were very successful in discriminating both across and within a range of phoneme boundaries. These results are discussed in terms of the presumed relationship between categorical perception and linguistic processing and in terms of synthetic speech continua.

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