Lexical access in the face of degraded speech: The effects of cognitive adaptation

Listeners often process speech in adverse conditions. One challenge is spectral degradation, where information is missing from the signal. Lexical competition dynamics change when processing degraded speech, but it is unclear why and how these changes occur. We ask if these changes are driven solely by the quality of the input from the auditory periphery, or if these changes are modulated by cognitive mechanisms. Across two experiments, we used the visual world paradigm to investigate changes in lexical processing. Listeners heard different levels of noise-vocoded speech (4- or 15-channel vocoding) and matched the auditory input to pictures of a target word and its phonological competitors. In Experiment 1 levels of vocoding were either blocked together consistently or randomly interleaved from trial-to-trial. Listeners in the blocked condition showed more differentiation between the two levels of vocoding; this suggests that some level of learning is in effect to adapt to the varying levels of uncertainty in the input. Exploratory analyses suggested that when less intelligible speech is processed there is a cost to switching processing modes. In Experiment 2 levels of vocoding were always randomly interleaved. A visual cue was added to inform listeners of the level of difficulty of the upcoming speech. This was enough to attenuate the effects of interleaving as well as the switch cost. These experiments support a role for central processing in dealing with degraded speech. Listeners may be actively forming expectations about the level of degradation they will encounter and altering the dynamics of lexical access.

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The Timing and Effort of Lexical Access in Natural and Degraded Speech

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00398 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Anita E. Wagner ◽

Paolo Toffanin ◽

Deniz Başkent

Keyword(s):

Lexical Access ◽

Degraded Speech

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Point-Light Facial Displays Enhance Comprehension of Speech in Noise

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jshr.3906.1159 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 39 (6) ◽

pp. 1159-1170 ◽

Cited By ~ 99

Author(s):

Lawrence D. Rosenblum ◽

Jennifer A. Johnson ◽

Helena M. Saldaña

Keyword(s):

Visual Speech ◽

Signal To Noise ◽

Speech In Noise ◽

Degraded Speech ◽

Telecommunication Systems ◽

Facial Displays ◽

The Face ◽

Point Light ◽

Visual Speech Information ◽

Speech Information

Seeing a talker's face can improve the perception of speech in noise. There is little known about which characteristics of the face are useful for enhancing the degraded signal. In this study, a point-light technique was employed to help isolate the salient kinematic aspects of a visible articulating face. In this technique, fluorescent dots were arranged on the lips, teeth, tongue, cheeks, and jaw of an actor. The actor was videotaped speaking in the dark, so that when shown to observers, only the moving dots were seen. To test whether these reduced images could contribute to the perception of degraded speech, noise-embedded sentences were dubbed with the point-light images at various signal-to-noise ratios. It was found that these images could significantly improve comprehension for adults with normal hearing and that the images became more effective as participants gained experience with the stimuli. These results have implications for uncovering salient visual speech information as well as in the development of telecommunication systems for listeners who are hearing impaired.

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Visual Speech Benefit in Clear and Degraded Speech Depends on the Auditory Intelligibility of the Talker and the Number of Background Talkers

Trends in Hearing ◽

10.1177/2331216519837866 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 23 ◽

pp. 233121651983786 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Catherine L. Blackburn ◽

Pádraig T. Kitterick ◽

Gary Jones ◽

Christian J. Sumner ◽

Paula C. Stacey

Keyword(s):

Speech Intelligibility ◽

Noise Signal ◽

Sine Wave ◽

Theory Model ◽

Visual Speech ◽

Clear Speech ◽

Visual Integration ◽

Degraded Speech ◽

The Face ◽

Vocoded Speech

Perceiving speech in background noise presents a significant challenge to listeners. Intelligibility can be improved by seeing the face of a talker. This is of particular value to hearing impaired people and users of cochlear implants. It is well known that auditory-only speech understanding depends on factors beyond audibility. How these factors impact on the audio-visual integration of speech is poorly understood. We investigated audio-visual integration when either the interfering background speech (Experiment 1) or intelligibility of the target talkers (Experiment 2) was manipulated. Clear speech was also contrasted with sine-wave vocoded speech to mimic the loss of temporal fine structure with a cochlear implant. Experiment 1 showed that for clear speech, the visual speech benefit was unaffected by the number of background talkers. For vocoded speech, a larger benefit was found when there was only one background talker. Experiment 2 showed that visual speech benefit depended upon the audio intelligibility of the talker and increased as intelligibility decreased. Degrading the speech by vocoding resulted in even greater benefit from visual speech information. A single “independent noise” signal detection theory model predicted the overall visual speech benefit in some conditions but could not predict the different levels of benefit across variations in the background or target talkers. This suggests that, similar to audio-only speech intelligibility, the integration of audio-visual speech cues may be functionally dependent on factors other than audibility and task difficulty, and that clinicians and researchers should carefully consider the characteristics of their stimuli when assessing audio-visual integration.

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Why do people believe in a zero-sum economy?

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18000389 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Samuel G. B. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Perspective Taking ◽

Evolutionary Model ◽

Everyday Experience ◽

Coalitional Psychology ◽

The Face ◽

Zero Sum

AbstractZero-sum thinking and aversion to trade pervade our society, yet fly in the face of everyday experience and the consensus of economists. Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) evolutionary model invokes coalitional psychology to explain these puzzling intuitions. I raise several empirical challenges to this explanation, proposing two alternative mechanisms – intuitive mercantilism (assigning value to money rather than goods) and errors in perspective-taking.

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Mars: was There an Ancient Eden?

International Astronomical Union Colloquium ◽

10.1017/s025292110001472x ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 161 ◽

pp. 203-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Tobias C. Owen

Keyword(s):

Positive Answer ◽

Biogenic Elements ◽

Habitable Zones ◽

The Face ◽

The Origin Of Life ◽

Early Mars ◽

Favorable Conditions ◽

Open Question ◽

Rocky Planets ◽

Impact Erosion

AbstractThe clear evidence of water erosion on the surface of Mars suggests an early climate much more clement than the present one. Using a model for the origin of inner planet atmospheres by icy planetesimal impact, it is possible to reconstruct the original volatile inventory on Mars, starting from the thin atmosphere we observe today. Evidence for cometary impact can be found in the present abundances and isotope ratios of gases in the atmosphere and in SNC meteorites. If we invoke impact erosion to account for the present excess of129Xe, we predict an early inventory equivalent to at least 7.5 bars of CO2. This reservoir of volatiles is adequate to produce a substantial greenhouse effect, provided there is some small addition of SO2(volcanoes) or reduced gases (cometary impact). Thus it seems likely that conditions on early Mars were suitable for the origin of life – biogenic elements and liquid water were present at favorable conditions of pressure and temperature. Whether life began on Mars remains an open question, receiving hints of a positive answer from recent work on one of the Martian meteorites. The implications for habitable zones around other stars include the need to have rocky planets with sufficient mass to preserve atmospheres in the face of intensive early bombardment.

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Evidence for a shear mechanism for the precipitation of γ-zirconium hydride in zirconium

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s042482010011043x ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 658-659

Author(s):

G.J.C. Carpenter

Keyword(s):

Elevated Temperature ◽

Strain Field ◽

Zirconium Hydride ◽

Zirconium Atom ◽

Atom Diffusion ◽

Solvus Temperature ◽

Hexagonal Close Packed ◽

Partial Dislocations ◽

The Face

In zirconium-hydrogen alloys, rapid cooling from an elevated temperature causes precipitation of the face-centred tetragonal (fct) phase, γZrH, in the form of needles, parallel to the close-packed <1120>zr directions (1). With low hydrogen concentrations, the hydride solvus is sufficiently low that zirconium atom diffusion cannot occur. For example, with 6 μg/g hydrogen, the solvus temperature is approximately 370 K (2), at which only the hydrogen diffuses readily. Shears are therefore necessary to produce the crystallographic transformation from hexagonal close-packed (hep) zirconium to fct hydride.The simplest mechanism for the transformation is the passage of Shockley partial dislocations having Burgers vectors (b) of the type 1/3<0110> on every second (0001)Zr plane. If the partial dislocations are in the form of loops with the same b, the crosssection of a hydride precipitate will be as shown in fig.1. A consequence of this type of transformation is that a cumulative shear, S, is produced that leads to a strain field in the surrounding zirconium matrix, as illustrated in fig.2a.

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A study of interface sliding at F.C.C.-B.C.C. boundaries in a Cu-Zn alloy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100109252 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 422-423

Author(s):

F. Monchoux ◽

A. Rocher ◽

J.L. Martin

Keyword(s):

Face Centered Cubic ◽

Creep Tests ◽

High Voltage Electron Microscopy ◽

Diffusion Treatment ◽

Voltage Electron ◽

The Face ◽

Face Centered ◽

Interface Sliding ◽

Zn Alloy ◽

Made In

Interphase sliding is an important phenomenon of high temperature plasticity. In order to study the microstructural changes associated with it, as well as its influence on the strain rate dependence on stress and temperature, plane boundaries were obtained by welding together two polycrystals of Cu-Zn alloys having the face centered cubic and body centered cubic structures respectively following the procedure described in (1). These specimens were then deformed in shear along the interface on a creep machine (2) at the same temperature as that of the diffusion treatment so as to avoid any precipitation. The present paper reports observations by conventional and high voltage electron microscopy of the microstructure of both phases, in the vicinity of the phase boundary, after different creep tests corresponding to various deformation conditions.Foils were cut by spark machining out of the bulk samples, 0.2 mm thick. They were then electropolished down to 0.1 mm, after which a hole with thin edges was made in an area including the boundary

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The glycomes of Caenorhabditis elegans and other model organisms

Biochemical Society Symposium ◽

10.1042/bss0690117 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 69 ◽

pp. 117-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Stuart M. Haslam ◽

David Gems ◽

Howard R. Morris ◽

Anne Dell

Keyword(s):

Caenorhabditis Elegans ◽

Current Knowledge ◽

Structural Data ◽

Model Organisms ◽

Entire Genome ◽

C Elegans ◽

The Face ◽

Area Of Concern ◽

Nematode Worm

There is no doubt that the immense amount of information that is being generated by the initial sequencing and secondary interrogation of various genomes will change the face of glycobiological research. However, a major area of concern is that detailed structural knowledge of the ultimate products of genes that are identified as being involved in glycoconjugate biosynthesis is still limited. This is illustrated clearly by the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which was the first multicellular organism to have its entire genome sequenced. To date, only limited structural data on the glycosylated molecules of this organism have been reported. Our laboratory is addressing this problem by performing detailed MS structural characterization of the N-linked glycans of C. elegans; high-mannose structures dominate, with only minor amounts of complex-type structures. Novel, highly fucosylated truncated structures are also present which are difucosylated on the proximal N-acetylglucosamine of the chitobiose core as well as containing unusual Fucα1–2Gal1–2Man as peripheral structures. The implications of these results in terms of the identification of ligands for genomically predicted lectins and potential glycosyltransferases are discussed in this chapter. Current knowledge on the glycomes of other model organisms such as Dictyostelium discoideum, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster is also discussed briefly.

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Supporting the Use of Rudimentary Vocalizations

Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication ◽

10.1044/aac23.3.132 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 132-139 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lauren Zubow ◽

Richard Hurtig

Keyword(s):

Rett Syndrome ◽

Visual Cues ◽

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Eye Gaze ◽

Research Question ◽

Primary Research ◽

Multiple Modalities ◽

Face To Face ◽

Perceptual Judgments ◽

The Face

Children with Rett Syndrome (RS) are reported to use multiple modalities to communicate although their intentionality is often questioned (Bartolotta, Zipp, Simpkins, & Glazewski, 2011; Hetzroni & Rubin, 2006; Sigafoos et al., 2000; Sigafoos, Woodyatt, Tuckeer, Roberts-Pennell, & Pittendreigh, 2000). This paper will present results of a study analyzing the unconventional vocalizations of a child with RS. The primary research question addresses the ability of familiar and unfamiliar listeners to interpret unconventional vocalizations as “yes” or “no” responses. This paper will also address the acoustic analysis and perceptual judgments of these vocalizations. Pre-recorded isolated vocalizations of “yes” and “no” were presented to 5 listeners (mother, father, 1 unfamiliar, and 2 familiar clinicians) and the listeners were asked to rate the vocalizations as either “yes” or “no.” The ratings were compared to the original identification made by the child's mother during the face-to-face interaction from which the samples were drawn. Findings of this study suggest, in this case, the child's vocalizations were intentional and could be interpreted by familiar and unfamiliar listeners as either “yes” or “no” without contextual or visual cues. The results suggest that communication partners should be trained to attend to eye-gaze and vocalizations to ensure the child's intended choice is accurately understood.

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