Dataset Information

Lexical Influences on Errors in Masked Speech Perception in Younger, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults.

ABSTRACT: Purpose In situations with a competing talker, lexical properties of words in both streams affect the recognition of words in the to-be-attended target stream. In this study, we tested whether these lexical properties also influence the type of errors made by listeners across the adult life span. Method Errors from a corpus collected by Helfer and Jesse (2015) were categorized as phonologically similar to words in the target and/or masker streams. Younger, middle-aged, and older listeners had produced these errors when trying to identify key words from a target stream while ignoring a single-talker masker. Neighborhood density and lexical frequency of target words and masker words had been manipulated independently. Results Lexical properties of target words influenced all types of errors. With higher frequency maskers, the probability of responding with a masker word increased and the phonological influence of target words decreased. Lower levels of lexical competition for maskers increased the probability that listeners reported a word phonologically related to both masker and target words. The influence of masker words increased across the adult life span, as evidenced by phonological intrusions into responses and the temporary failure in selectively attending to the target stream. The effects of lexical properties on error patterns, however, were consistent across age groups. Conclusions The ease of recognition of words in both attended and unattended speech influences the breakdown of speech perception. These influences remain robust across the adult life span.

SUBMITTER: Jesse A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6802874 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Lexical Influences on Errors in Masked Speech Perception in Younger, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults.

Jesse Alexandra A Helfer Karen S KS

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR 20190401 4S

Purpose In situations with a competing talker, lexical properties of words in both streams affect the recognition of words in the to-be-attended target stream. In this study, we tested whether these lexical properties also influence the type of errors made by listeners across the adult life span. Method Errors from a corpus collected by Helfer and Jesse (2015) were categorized as phonologically similar to words in the target and/or masker streams. Younger, middle-aged, and older listeners had pr ...[more]

PMID: 31026195

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Project description:Successful perception depends on combining sensory input with prior knowledge. However, the underlying mechanism by which these two sources of information are combined is unknown. In speech perception, as in other domains, two functionally distinct coding schemes have been proposed for how expectations influence representation of sensory evidence. Traditional models suggest that expected features of the speech input are enhanced or sharpened via interactive activation (Sharpened Signals). Conversely, Predictive Coding suggests that expected features are suppressed so that unexpected features of the speech input (Prediction Errors) are processed further. The present work is aimed at distinguishing between these two accounts of how prior knowledge influences speech perception. By combining behavioural, univariate, and multivariate fMRI measures of how sensory detail and prior expectations influence speech perception with computational modelling, we provide evidence in favour of Prediction Error computations. Increased sensory detail and informative expectations have additive behavioural and univariate neural effects because they both improve the accuracy of word report and reduce the BOLD signal in lateral temporal lobe regions. However, sensory detail and informative expectations have interacting effects on speech representations shown by multivariate fMRI in the posterior superior temporal sulcus. When prior knowledge was absent, increased sensory detail enhanced the amount of speech information measured in superior temporal multivoxel patterns, but with informative expectations, increased sensory detail reduced the amount of measured information. Computational simulations of Sharpened Signals and Prediction Errors during speech perception could both explain these behavioural and univariate fMRI observations. However, the multivariate fMRI observations were uniquely simulated by a Prediction Error and not a Sharpened Signal model. The interaction between prior expectation and sensory detail provides evidence for a Predictive Coding account of speech perception. Our work establishes methods that can be used to distinguish representations of Prediction Error and Sharpened Signals in other perceptual domains.

Dataset Information

Lexical Influences on Errors in Masked Speech Perception in Younger, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults.

Publications

Lexical Influences on Errors in Masked Speech Perception in Younger, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults.

Similar Datasets

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