Seeing closing gesture of articulators affects speech perception of geminate consonants

Abstract

This study tests the perception of geminate consonants for native speakers of Japanese using audio and visual information. A previous study showed that formant transitions associated with the closing gesture of articulators at the end of a preceding vowel are crucial for perception of stop geminate consonants in Japanese. In addition, this study further focuses on visual cues, to test if seeing the closing gesture affects perception of geminate consonants. Based on a perceptual experiment, it is observed that visual information can compensate for a deficiency in geminate consonant auditory information, such as formant transitions.