Auditory Judgments Research Articles

Island effects and amelioration by resumption in Jordanian Arabic: An auditory acceptability‐judgment study

AbstractThis study brings evidence from Jordanian Arabic, a primarily spoken grammatical‐resumption language, into the (formal‐experimental) empirical base of both theories of island effects and theories of island amelioration by resumption. We report four auditory judgment studies exploring two dependency types and four island types with a gap or resumption in the tail of the dependency, yielding 16 distinct quantified effects. Our experiments identified two notable sources of variation: variation across dependency types in the sets of island effects that occur with gaps and variation across island types in amelioration by resumption. We discuss the challenges these results raise for four major classes of theories of island effects, and we point to paths forward for each. We also discuss the consequences of the variation in amelioration for theories of the source of resumption, concluding that both base generation and movement must be available options to learners of Jordanian Arabic. We also observe some evidence of individual variation in the availability of resumption across dependency types that could be explored in future studies.

The role of neural oscillations in visuo-motor communication at the time of saccades

Saccadic eye-movements are fundamental for active vision, allowing observers to purposefully scan the environment with the high-resolution fovea. In this brief perspective we outline a series of experiments from our laboratories investigating the role of eye-movements and their consequences to active perception. We show that saccades lead to suppression of visual sensitivity at saccadic onset, and that this suppression is accompanied by endogenous neural oscillations in the delta range. Similar oscillations are initiated by purposeful hand movements, which lead to measurable changes in responsivity in area V1, and in the connectivity with motor area M1. Saccades also lead to clear distortions in apparent position, but only for verbal reports, not when participants respond with rapid pointing, consistent with the action of two separate visual systems in neurotypical adults. At the time of saccades, serial dependence, the positive influence on perception of previous stimulus attributes (such as orientation) is particularly strong. Again, these processes are accompanied by neural oscillations, in the alpha and low beta range. In general, oscillations seem to be tightly linked to serial dependence in perception, both in auditory judgments (around 10 Hz), and for visual judgements of face gender (14 Hz for female, 17 Hz for male). Taken together, the studies show that neural oscillations play a fundamental role in dynamic, active vision.

Individual differences in the auditory processing of morpho-phonological and semantic cues

ABSTRACT Morpho-phonological patterns and semantic density influence the processing of spoken complex words and contribute to the dissociation between regularly and irregularly inflected forms. However, it is unclear whether all listeners rely on morpho-phonological and semantic cues to the same degree. The present paper examines whether a listener’s cognitive profile, indicated by processing efficiency, affects the processing strategy employed when listening to morphologically complex words. Two auditory judgement experiments demonstrate that slower responders rely more strongly on semantic processing than faster responders, but all listeners show morpho-phonological effects regardless of processing speed and form effects. This demonstrates that morpho-phonological processing is automatic for all listeners, but processing efficiency determines whether additional semantic cues are engaged. The results highlight the importance of integrating cognitive variability into current models of complex word processing.

Response outcome gates the effect of spontaneous cortical state fluctuations on perceptual decisions.

Sensory responses of cortical neurons are more discriminable when evoked on a baseline of desynchronized spontaneous activity, but cortical desynchronization has not generally been associated with more accurate perceptual decisions. Here, we show that mice perform more accurate auditory judgments when activity in the auditory cortex is elevated and desynchronized before stimulus onset, but only if the previous trial was an error, and that this relationship is occluded if previous outcome is ignored. We confirmed that the outcome-dependent effect of brain state on performance is neither due to idiosyncratic associations between the slow components of either signal, nor to the existence of specific cortical states evident only after errors. Instead, errors appear to gate the effect of cortical state fluctuations on discrimination accuracy. Neither facial movements nor pupil size during the baseline were associated with accuracy, but they were predictive of measures of responsivity, such as the probability of not responding to the stimulus or of responding prematurely. These results suggest that the functional role of cortical state on behavior is dynamic and constantly regulated by performance monitoring systems.

Production of gutturals by non-native speakers of Arabic

This paper investigates the production of Arabic gutturals by native (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) of Arabic. A total of 40 participants, 20 NSs and 20 NNSs were recruited. 240 tokens were collected using two major methods: free speech and nonsense word testing. Using PRAAT software (version 6.1.01), the tokens were analyzed acoustically to measure F1 and F2 and to signal the (non)significance of the difference between the target groups and auditorily to rate gutturals’ production accuracy by NNSs. F1 and F2 of the vowels neighbouring the gutturals were normalized using the speaker extrinsic Labov ANAE method (NORM version 1.1) to eliminate the effects of gender and age. The study demonstrates some important findings: in terms of quality, the F1-F2 approximation varies by nativeness in that NNSs were unable to make enough coarticulatory effects associated with Arabic gutturals. This result indicates that NNSs do not make a sufficient primary constriction in the posterior regions of the vocal tract. Relying on auditory judgments of accuracy, the most accurately produced gutturals by NNSs were the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ followed by the voiceless glottal plosive /ʔ/, and the lowest ranked gutturals were the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ and the voiced pharyngeal fricative /ʕ/. The study concludes that non-temporal cues especially F1 and F2 are essential correlates to Arabic gutturals’ production. Because such factors are language-specific, they should be taken into consideration in the teaching of Arabic as a second/foreign language.

Variability in speaker expectations of morphosyntactic mutation in Welsh

Like all modern Celtic languages Welsh exhibits initial consonant mutation with both lexical and morphosyntactic triggers. Owing to the complexity of the system and the sociolinguistic situation of Welsh, change and variation in the system seems inevitable, and evidence for change has been observed in production. Less work, however, has focused on speakers’ attitudes and expectations in perception. We used an online auditory acceptability judgement survey to investigate expectations for different morphosyntactic soft-mutation triggers. Respondents listened to sentences with canonical and non-canonical mutation patterns and used Likert scales to indicate for each sentence whether they would use the same pattern themselves and whether they would expect it from others. Almost all respondents expected some variation, even in their own production, but two main clusters of respondents could be identified: “Conservative” respondents whose expectations were close to canonical mutation patterns and “Variable” respondents whose expectations were considerably more flexible. First-language status was the only demographic variable to predict respondent attitudes, suggesting that L2 Welsh speakers accept noncanonical mutation to a greater extent than L1 Welsh speakers. We also compared different mutation triggers, with the tentative conclusion that apparently identical triggers may not in fact be identical for all speakers, and that trigger transparency may be an important factor in predicting variability.

The Effects of Pitch Manipulation on Male Ratings of Female Speakers and Their Voices.

Vocal and facial cues typically co-occur in natural settings, and multisensory processing of voice and face relies on their synchronous presentation. Psychological research has examined various facial and vocal cues to attractiveness as well as to judgements of sexual dimorphism, health, and age. However, few studies have investigated the interaction of vocal and facial cues in attractiveness judgments under naturalistic conditions using dynamic, ecologically valid stimuli. Here, we used short videos or audio tracks of females speaking full sentences and used a manipulation of voice pitch to investigate cross-modal interactions of voice pitch on facial attractiveness and related ratings. Male participants had to rate attractiveness, femininity, age, and health of synchronized audio-video recordings or voices only, with either original or modified voice pitch. We expected audio stimuli with increased voice pitch to be rated as more attractive, more feminine, healthier, and younger. If auditory judgements cross-modally influence judgements of facial attributes, we additionally expected the voice pitch manipulation to affect ratings of audiovisual stimulus material. We tested 106 male participants in a within-subject design in two sessions. Analyses revealed that voice recordings with increased voice pitch were perceived to be more feminine and younger, but not more attractive or healthier. When coupled with video recordings, increased pitch lowered perceived age of faces, but did not significantly influence perceived attractiveness, femininity, or health. Our results suggest that our manipulation of voice pitch has a measurable impact on judgements of femininity and age, but does not measurably influence vocal and facial attractiveness in naturalistic conditions.

A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study on the White Matter Structures Related to the Phonology in Cantonese-Mandarin Bilinguals.

Cantonese and Mandarin are logographic languages, and the phonology is the main difference between the two languages. It is unclear whether the long-term experience of Cantonese–Mandarin bilingualism will shape different brain white matter structures related to phonological processing. A total of 30 Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals and 30 Mandarin monolinguals completed diffusion-weighted imaging scan and phonological processing tasks. The tractography and tract-based spatial statistics were used to investigate the structural differences in the bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), and inferior fronto–occipital fasciculus (IFOF) between Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals and Mandarin monolinguals. The post-hoc correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship between the different structures with phonological processing skills. Compared to the Mandarin monolinguals, the Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals had higher fractional anisotropy (FA) along the left ILFs higher mean diffusivity (MD) along the right IFOF and the temporoparietal segment of SLF (tSLF), higher axial diffusivity (AD) in the right IFOF and left ILF, and lower number of streamlines in the bilateral tSLF. The mean AD of the different voxels in the right IFOF and the mean FA of the different voxels in the left ILF were positively correlated with the inverse efficiency score (IES) of the Cantonese auditory and Mandarin visual rhyming judgment tasks, respectively, within the bilingual group. The correlation between FA and IES was different among the groups. The long-term experience of Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals shapes the different brain white matter structures in tSLF, IFOF, and ILF. Compared to the monolinguals, the bilinguals’ white matter showed higher diffusivity, especially in the axonal direction. These changes were related to bilinguals’ phonological processing.

On the learnability of level-based and unit-based tonal OCP generalizations: An artificial grammar learning study

In previous research of tonal phonology, contour tones were assumed to be phonologically presented not only as a sequence of level tones but also as a single unit. Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) constraints, by extension, were thought to prohibit identical level tones associated to adjacent terminal nodes (OCP-Terminal) and identical adjacent tonal units (OCP-Unit). This proposal has nevertheless been challenged theoretically and empirically. This study seeks to offer new experimental evidence to help solve the debate by comparing the learnability of the two OCP generalizations in an artificial grammar learning paradigm. In Exp I, we exposed disyllabic tonal patterns conforming either to OCP-Terminal or to OCP-Unit to two target groups of learners, who were then tested if they could extend the hidden generalization to their auditory acceptability judgment of novel disyllabic items. Exp II had the same exposure phase but required learners to produce novel disyllabic items with tonal combinations of their choice. In both experiments, the two target groups demonstrated signs of learning target OCP generalizations from different channels. Crucially, learners implicitly acquired the OCP-Terminal generalization but only learned the OCP-Unit pattern as explicit knowledge. These findings led us to conclude that OCP-Unit may not be involved in implicit and automatized phonological computation.

Age and Auditory Spatial Perception in Humans: Review of Behavioral Findings and Suggestions for Future Research.

It has been well documented, and fairly well known, that concomitant with an increase in chronological age is a corresponding increase in sensory impairment. As most people realize, our hearing suffers as we get older; hence, the increased need for hearing aids. The first portion of the present paper is how the change in age apparently affects auditory judgments of sound source position. A summary of the literature evaluating the changes in the perception of sound source location and the perception of sound source motion as a function of chronological age is presented. The review is limited to empirical studies with behavioral findings involving humans. It is the view of the author that we have an immensely limited understanding of how chronological age affects perception of space when based on sound. In the latter part of the paper, discussion is given to how auditory spatial perception is traditionally conducted in the laboratory. Theoretically, beneficial reasons exist for conducting research in the manner it has been. Nonetheless, from an ecological perspective, the vast majority of previous research can be considered unnatural and greatly lacking in ecological validity. Suggestions for an alternative and more ecologically valid approach to the investigation of auditory spatial perception are proposed. It is believed an ecological approach to auditory spatial perception will enhance our understanding of the extent to which individuals perceive sound source location and how those perceptual judgments change with an increase in chronological age.

Repetition of anchor stimuli and nature of vocal samples in the perceptual auditory judgment performed by speech-language pathology students.

Verify the effect of anchor repetition in the perceptual auditory judgement of the type of vocal deviation performed by speech-language pathology (SLP) students; analyze the correlation between the amount of different vocal dimensions in the same stimuli and accuracy; investigate the correlation between type of vocal deviation and accuracy. 54 SLP students were divided in two groups: Group with repetition (GwR), 28 students; and, Group with no repetition (GnR), 26 students. The analyzed sample counted with 220 dysphonic human voices, vowel /ε/. The GwR heard three anchor stimuli before the judgement and every 20 voices during the assessment. The GnR heard the anchor only before beginning the judgement. The anchor stimuli counted with one rough, one breathy and one strain voice. These classifications were compared with reference judgements from three expert SLPs. The intra and inter-rater reliability, the correlation between the amount of different vocal dimensions in the same stimuli and type of vocal deviation with accuracy were assessed. The accuracy between type of deviation was similar among groups. The GwR presented slightly higher intra and inter-rater reliability. The student's accuracy was inversely proportional to the amount of different vocal dimensions in the stimuli. Breathiness presented the highest accuracy and strain presented the lowest accuracy. The repetition of anchor stimuli improved intra and inter-rater reliability. However, it was not effective in the accuracy of the type of vocal deviation. The amount of different vocal dimensions in the stimuli have influence in the students' accuracy.

Effect of Environment-Related Cues on Auditory Distance Perception in the Context of Audio-Only Augmented Reality

Audio-only augmented reality consists of enhancing a real environment with virtual sound events. A seamless integration of the virtual events within the environment requires processing them with artificial spatialization and reverberation effects that simulate the acoustic properties of the room. However, in augmented reality, the visual and acoustic environment of the listener may not be fully mastered. This study aims to gain some insight into the acoustic cues (intensity and reverberation) that are used by the listener to form an auditory distance judgment, and to observe if these strategies can be influenced by the listener’s environment. To do so, we present a perceptual evaluation of two distance-rendering models informed by a measured Spatial Room Impulse Response. The choice of the rendering methods was made to design stimuli categories in which the availability and reproduction quality of acoustic cues are different. The proposed models have been evaluated in an online experiment gathering 108 participants who were asked to provide judgments of auditory distance about a stationary source. To evaluate the importance of environmental cues, participants had to describe the environment in which they were running the experiment, and more specifically the volume of the room and the distance to the wall they were facing. It could be shown that these context cues had a limited, but significant, influence on the perceived auditory distance.

Voice evaluation – contribution of the speech-language pathologist voice specialist – SLP-V: part A. History of the problem and vocal behaviour data, self-assessment and auditory perceptual judgement

The human voice is the product of a sophisticated interaction of aerodynamic and myoelastic forces, a perceptual phenomenon that is greatly influenced by vocal behaviour in interpersonal relationships. Vocal problems can be overly complex and can require a team approach, whether for diagnosis or treatment of the patient. This article describes the contribution of the speech-language pathologist, voice specialist SLP-V in the assessment of patients with vocal complaints. A clinical evaluation proposal developed in a 40- to 60-min session is presented. This proposal consists of the following steps: the history of the problem; the patient self-assessment; the auditory perceptual judgement and acoustic analysis; the physical examination; and finally, the correlation of all previously described steps with the medical diagnosis. Part A of this text explores the history of the problem with the focus to determine the influence of the vocal behaviour on the case; the self-assessment of the impact of the voice problem to verify the patient experience in living and coping with dysphonia; and the auditory perceptual judgement to describe the type and degree of vocal deviation. Worldwide published tendencies and specific comments of each step highlight the role of the SLP-V.

Adaptive auditory brightness perception

Perception adapts to the properties of prior stimulation, as illustrated by phenomena such as visual color constancy or speech context effects. In the auditory domain, only little is known about adaptive processes when it comes to the attribute of auditory brightness. Here, we report an experiment that tests whether listeners adapt to spectral colorations imposed on naturalistic music and speech excerpts. Our results indicate consistent contrastive adaptation of auditory brightness judgments on a trial-by-trial basis. The pattern of results suggests that these effects tend to grow with an increase in the duration of the adaptor context but level off after around 8 trials of 2 s duration. A simple model of the response criterion yields a correlation of r = .97 with the measured data and corroborates the notion that brightness perception adapts on timescales that fall in the range of auditory short-term memory. Effects turn out to be similar for spectral filtering based on linear spectral filter slopes and filtering based on a measured transfer function from a commercially available hearing device. Overall, our findings demonstrate the adaptivity of auditory brightness perception under realistic acoustical conditions.

Accuracy of Tempo Judgments in Disk Jockeys Compared to Musicians and Untrained Individuals.

Professional disk jockeys (DJs) are an under-studied population whose performance involves creating new musical experiences by combining existing musical materials with a high level of temporal precision. In contemporary electronic dance music, these materials have a stable tempo and are composed with the expectation for further transformation during performance by a DJ for the audience of dancers. Thus, a fundamental aspect of DJ performance is synchronizing the tempo and phase of multiple pieces of music, so that over seconds or even minutes, they may be layered and transitioned without disrupting the rhythmic pulse. This has been accomplished traditionally by manipulating the speed of individual music pieces “by ear,” without additional technological synchronization aids. However, the cumulative effect of this repeated practice on auditory tempo perception has not yet been evaluated. Well-known phenomena of experience-dependent plasticity in other populations, such as musicians, prompts the question of whether such effects exist in DJs in their domain of expertise. This pilot study examined auditory judgments of tempo in 10 professional DJs with experience mixing by ear, compared to 7 percussionists, 12 melodic instrumental musicians, and 11 untrained controls. Participants heard metronome sequences between 80 and 160 beats per minute (BPM) and estimated the tempo. In their most-trained tempo range, 120–139 BPM, DJs were more accurate (lower absolute percent error) than untrained participants. Within the DJ group, 120–139 BPM exhibited greater accuracy than slower tempos of 80–99 or 100–119 BPM. DJs did not differ in accuracy compared to percussionists or melodic musicians on any BPM range. Percussionists were more accurate than controls for 100–119 and 120–139 BPM. The results affirm the experience-dependent skill of professional DJs in temporal perception, with comparable performance to conventionally trained percussionists and instrumental musicians. Additionally, the pattern of results suggests a tempo-specific aspect to this training effect that may be more pronounced in DJs than percussionists and musicians. As one of the first demonstrations of enhanced auditory perception in this unorthodox music expert population, this work opens the way to testing whether DJs also have enhanced rhythmic production abilities, and investigating the neural substrates of this skill compared to conventional musicians.

Visual Looming Influences Loudness Change: A Preliminary Investigation

ABSTRACT Looming objects generate unique multisensory information and can signal potential danger. While visual judgments of arrival time are relatively accurate, auditory judgments tend to be anticipatory. When presented with information from both modalities, observers tend to rely on visual information for successful interaction. Previous work has shown that auditory information can influence perception of visual looming and receding. Here, we examined how visual information affects the auditory perception of looming and receding sounds. Participants judged the loudness change of sounds accompanied by visual looming and receding stimuli. We found that looming and receding visual stimuli influenced estimates of loudness change. Sounds were perceived to change more in loudness when presented with a larger visual change. We also found that looming sounds were perceived to change more in loudness than equivalent receding sounds and that participants showed better discrimination of the change between receding sounds than looming sounds.

Voice quality and voice dynamics data

Acoustic and perceptual auditory analysis procedures present themselves as clinical tools which give support to the understanding of the speech features of hearing impaired children (HIC). Voice quality stems from the overlapped action of the larynx, the supralaryngeal vocal tract and the level of muscular tension throughout the speech flow. Nonetheless, voice dynamics is characterized by frequency, duration and intensity variations. This research aimed at investigating acoustic and perceptive correlates of a HIC child’s voice and dynamic quality. The child, who has a cochlear implanted, had his speech samples collected during speech therapy sessions. The male subject (R), who uses a unilateral cochlear implant (UCI), had his speech production samples recorded when he was 5 (05 samples) and 6 years old (05 samples), and which were later tagged Cut A and Cut B respectively. The recorded corpus was acoustically analyzed through the use of the SGEXpressionEvaluator script (Barbosa, 2009) running on the free software Praat v10. The measures which were automatically extracted by the script correspond to the fundamental frequency –f0, first f0 derivative, intensity, spectral fall and long term spectrum. The perceptual auditory analysis of the voice quality was based on the VPAS-PB script (Camargo e Madureira, 2008). The perceptual auditory judgments and the acoustic measures were subjected to statistical analysis procedures. At first the, the data (perceptual and acoustic) were separately analyzed through a hierarchical and agglomerative cluster analysis. Subsequently, they were examined together through the principal component analysis. Results revealed the existence of correspondence between the acoustic and perceptual auditory data. In the audio recorded data samples from Cut B (one year after the first one) greater variability tendencies in acoustic measures of f0 could be observed associated with laryngeal hyper function at the perceptual level plus silent pauses and the reduction of speech rate. From the integrated acoustic and perceptual analysis it was possible to keep a record of the child’s oral language development process. The data analysis in this study allowed the observation of several interaction levels between the vocal tract (lip movement extension adjusts, tongue and jaw, associated with velopharyngeal adjusts and muscular tension from the larynx), plus the inspection of speech dynamics elements (habitual pitch and speech rate) of a child’s speech who has a UCI implanted during a one-year-speech-therapy-process period. This source of information made the characterization of the child’s evolution possible, especially in terms of perceptual auditory analysis descriptions being phonetically motivated by the speech dynamics quality.

Intonational effects on English scopally-ambiguous sentences

This paper examines the effect of intonation contour on two types of scopally ambiguous constructions in English: configurations with a universal quantifier in subject position and sentential negation (e.g., Every horse didn’t jump) and configurations with quantifiers in both subject and object positions (e.g., A girl saw every boy). There is much prior literature on the relationship between the fall-rise intonation and availability of inverse scope with quantifier-negation configurations. The present study has two objectives: (1) to examine whether the role of intonation in facilitating inverse scope is restricted to this configuration, or whether it extends to double-quantifier configurations as well; and (2) to examine whether fall-rise intonation fully disambiguates the sentence, or only facilitates inverse scope. These questions were investigated experimentally, via an auditory acceptability judgment task, in which native English speakers rated the acceptability of auditorily presented sentences in contexts matching surface-scope vs. inverse-scope readings. The results provide evidence that fall-rise intonation facilitates the inverse-scope readings of English quantifier-negation configurations (supporting findings from prior literature), but not those of double-quantifier configurations.

Crossmodal Visuospatial Effects on Auditory Perception of Musical Contour.

The crossmodal correspondence between auditory pitch and visuospatial elevation (in which high- and low-pitched tones are associated with high and low spatial elevation respectively) has been proposed as the basis for Western musical notation. One implication of this is that music perception engages visuospatial processes and may not be exclusively auditory. Here, we investigated how music perception is influenced by concurrent visual stimuli. Participants listened to unfamiliar five-note musical phrases with four kinds of pitch contour (rising, falling, rising-falling, or falling-rising), accompanied by incidental visual contours that were either congruent (e.g., auditory rising/visual rising) or incongruent (e.g., auditory rising/visual falling) and judged whether the final note of the musical phrase was higher or lower in pitch than the first. Response times for the auditory judgment were significantly slower for incongruent compared to congruent trials, i.e., there was a congruency effect, even though the visual contours were incidental to the auditory task. These results suggest that music perception, although generally regarded as an auditory experience, may actually be multisensory in nature.

The accuracy of auditory spatial judgments in the visually impaired is dependent on sound source distance

Blindness leads to substantial enhancements in many auditory abilities, and deficits in others. It is unknown how severe visual losses need to be before changes in auditory abilities occur, or whether the relationship between severity of visual loss and changes in auditory abilities is proportional and systematic. Here we show that greater severity of visual loss is associated with increased auditory judgments of distance and room size. On average participants with severe visual losses perceived sounds to be twice as far away, and rooms to be three times larger, than sighted controls. Distance estimates for sighted controls were most accurate for closer sounds and least accurate for farther sounds. As the severity of visual impairment increased, accuracy decreased for closer sounds and increased for farther sounds. However, it is for closer sounds that accurate judgments are needed to guide rapid motor responses to auditory events, e.g. planning a safe path through a busy street to avoid collisions with other people, and falls. Interestingly, greater visual impairment severity was associated with more accurate room size estimates. The results support a new hypothesis that crossmodal calibration of audition by vision depends on the severity of visual loss.