Successful non-native speech perception is linked to frequency following response phase consistency.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Omote A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5542039 | biostudies-other | 2017 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:Traditionally, much of the attention on the communicative effects of non-native accent has focused on the accent itself rather than how it functions within a more natural context. The present study explores how the bodily context of co-speech emblematic gestures affects perceptual and social evaluation of non-native accent. In two experiments in two different languages, Mandarin and Japanese, we filmed learners performing a short utterance in three different within-subjects conditions: speech alone, culturally familiar gesture, and culturally unfamiliar gesture. Native Mandarin participants watched videos of foreign-accented Mandarin speakers (Experiment 1), and native Japanese participants watched videos of foreign-accented Japanese speakers (Experiment 2). Following each video, native language participants were asked a set of questions targeting speech perception and social impressions of the learners. Results from both experiments demonstrate that familiar-and occasionally unfamiliar-emblems facilitated speech perception and enhanced social evaluations compared to the speech alone baseline. The variability in our findings suggests that gesture may serve varied functions in the perception and evaluation of non-native accent.
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Project description:The objective was to determine whether speech perception could be improved for bimodal listeners (those using a cochlear implant [CI] in one ear and hearing aid in the contralateral ear) by removing low-frequency information provided by the CI, thereby reducing acoustic-electric overlap.Subjects were adult CI subjects with at least 1 year of CI experience. Nine subjects were evaluated in the CI-only condition (control condition), and 26 subjects were evaluated in the bimodal condition. CIs were programmed with 4 experimental programs in which the low cutoff frequency (LCF) was progressively raised. Speech perception was evaluated using Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant words in quiet, AzBio sentences in background babble, and spondee words in background babble.The CI-only group showed decreased speech perception in both quiet and noise as the LCF was raised. Bimodal subjects with better hearing in the hearing aid ear (< 60 dB HL at 250 and 500 Hz) performed best for words in quiet as the LCF was raised. In contrast, bimodal subjects with worse hearing (> 60 dB HL at 250 and 500 Hz) performed similarly to the CI-only group.These findings suggest that reducing low-frequency overlap of the CI and contralateral hearing aid may improve performance in quiet for some bimodal listeners with better hearing.
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Project description:PurposeThe aim of this article is to examine the effects of visual image degradation on performance and gaze behavior in audiovisual and visual-only speech perception tasks.MethodWe presented vowel-consonant-vowel utterances visually filtered at a range of frequencies in visual-only, audiovisual congruent, and audiovisual incongruent conditions (Experiment 1; N = 66). In Experiment 2 (N = 20), participants performed a visual-only speech perception task and in Experiment 3 (N = 20) an audiovisual task while having their gaze behavior monitored using eye-tracking equipment.ResultsIn the visual-only condition, increasing image resolution led to monotonic increases in performance, and proficient speechreaders were more affected by the removal of high spatial information than were poor speechreaders. The McGurk effect also increased with increasing visual resolution, although it was less affected by the removal of high-frequency information. Observers tended to fixate on the mouth more in visual-only perception, but gaze toward the mouth did not correlate with accuracy of silent speechreading or the magnitude of the McGurk effect.ConclusionsThe results suggest that individual differences in silent speechreading and the McGurk effect are not related. This conclusion is supported by differential influences of high-resolution visual information on the 2 tasks and differences in the pattern of gaze.
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Project description:This present study investigated the link between speech-in-speech perception capacities and four executive function components: response suppression, inhibitory control, switching and working memory. We constructed a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm using a written target word and a spoken prime word, implemented in one of two concurrent auditory sentences (cocktail party situation). The prime and target were semantically related or unrelated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visual target words and simultaneously listen to only one of two pronounced sentences. The attention of the participant was manipulated: The prime was in the pronounced sentence listened to by the participant or in the ignored one. In addition, we evaluate the executive function abilities of participants (switching cost, inhibitory-control cost and response-suppression cost) and their working memory span. Correlation analyses were performed between the executive and priming measurements. Our results showed a significant interaction effect between attention and semantic priming. We observed a significant priming effect in the attended but not in the ignored condition. Only priming effects obtained in the ignored condition were significantly correlated with some of the executive measurements. However, no correlation between priming effects and working memory capacity was found. Overall, these results confirm, first, the role of attention for semantic priming effect and, second, the implication of executive functions in speech-in-noise understanding capacities.
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