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A psychophysical imaging method evidencing auditory cue extraction during speech perception: a group analysis of auditory classification images.

ABSTRACT: Although there is a large consensus regarding the involvement of specific acoustic cues in speech perception, the precise mechanisms underlying the transformation from continuous acoustical properties into discrete perceptual units remains undetermined. This gap in knowledge is partially due to the lack of a turnkey solution for isolating critical speech cues from natural stimuli. In this paper, we describe a psychoacoustic imaging method known as the Auditory Classification Image technique that allows experimenters to estimate the relative importance of time-frequency regions in categorizing natural speech utterances in noise. Importantly, this technique enables the testing of hypotheses on the listening strategies of participants at the group level. We exemplify this approach by identifying the acoustic cues involved in da/ga categorization with two phonetic contexts, Al- or Ar-. The application of Auditory Classification Images to our group of 16 participants revealed significant critical regions on the second and third formant onsets, as predicted by the literature, as well as an unexpected temporal cue on the first formant. Finally, through a cluster-based nonparametric test, we demonstrate that this method is sufficiently sensitive to detect fine modifications of the classification strategies between different utterances of the same phoneme.

SUBMITTER: Varnet L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4364617 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A psychophysical imaging method evidencing auditory cue extraction during speech perception: a group analysis of auditory classification images.

Varnet Léo L Knoblauch Kenneth K Serniclaes Willy W Meunier Fanny F Hoen Michel M

PloS one 20150317 3

Although there is a large consensus regarding the involvement of specific acoustic cues in speech perception, the precise mechanisms underlying the transformation from continuous acoustical properties into discrete perceptual units remains undetermined. This gap in knowledge is partially due to the lack of a turnkey solution for isolating critical speech cues from natural stimuli. In this paper, we describe a psychoacoustic imaging method known as the Auditory Classification Image technique that ...[more]

PMID: 25781470

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Project description:There is a large amount of variability in performance in masked-speech reception tasks, as well as in psychophysical auditory temporal processing tasks, between listeners with normal or relatively normal low-frequency hearing. In this study we used a cross-sectional dataset collected on 102 listeners (34 young, 34 middle-aged, 34 older) to assess whether variance in these tasks could be explained by variance in subcortical electrophysiological measures of auditory function (auditory brainstem responses and frequency following responses), and whether variance in speech-reception performance could be explained by variance in auditory temporal processing tasks. The potential confounding effect of high-frequency sensitivity was strictly controlled for by using highpass masking noise. Because each high-level construct (masked-speech reception, auditory temporal processing, and subcortical electrophysiological function) was indexed by several variables, we used principal component analyses to reduce the dimensionality of the dataset. Multiple-regression models were then used to assess the associations between the extracted principal components while controlling for a range of possible confounders including age and audiometric thresholds. We found that masked-speech reception was credibly associated with psychophysical auditory temporal processing abilities. No credible associations were found between masked-speech reception and electrophysiological measures of subcortical auditory function, or between psychophysical measures of auditory temporal processing and electrophysiological measures of subcortical auditory function. These results suggest that either the electrophysiological measures of subcortical auditory function used were not sufficiently sensitive to the subcortical neural processes limiting performance in the speech-reception and psychophysical auditory temporal-processing tasks, or that variance in these tasks is largely unrelated to variance in subcortical neural processes in listeners with near-normal hearing.

Dataset Information

A psychophysical imaging method evidencing auditory cue extraction during speech perception: a group analysis of auditory classification images.

Publications

A psychophysical imaging method evidencing auditory cue extraction during speech perception: a group analysis of auditory classification images.

Similar Datasets

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