Consonant Vowel Research Articles

S09. The role of oscillatory activity in attentive speech perception: An Ecog study in epilepsy patients

Introduction Activation of neuronal networks is typically associated with a change in spectral power in electric signals within the network. The role of different spectral bands in mediating cognitive processes is still not fully understood. In human language networks, a hierarchical model has been suggested in which different types of linguistic information is transferred in different oscillatory bands. Within that model, attention is assumed to correlate with increase in gamma and decrease in alpha band power. Electrocorticography (ECoG) allows the segregation of neural representations independently of stimulus variation. Aim of the study Here, for the first time, we investigate whether selective attention to the different components of a syllable (i.e., consonants or vowels) modulates the spectral power of oscillatory activity (i.e., broadband gamma and alpha) and whether these changes relate to behavioral performance. Methods To address this issue, we measured ECoG signals in 11 patients with refractory epilepsy who were undergoing pre-surgical screening. Neuronal responses were measured with intracranial electrodes (i.e., grids, strips, and depth hippocampal electrodes). The patients engaged in cognitive testing in which auditory consonant–vowel syllable sounds were compared with written letters (i.e., delay match-to-sample task). The behavioral relevance of different components of the syllables was manipulated in four levels; attention was directed either to the complete syllable, only to the vowel, only to the consonant, or the syllable sound was irrelevant. Analysis We calculated: (a) bipolar differentials between each pair of neighboring channels; (b) time–frequency representations of power between 2 and 150 Hz; (c) an index of power change, per trial, relative to power during pre-stimulus baseline period; and (d) average power modulation for two frequency bands (i.e., 5–15 and 70–150 Hz). Results Presentation of stimuli was associated with an increase in broadband gamma (70–150 Hz) and a decrease in alpha (5–15 Hz) over sensory cortex (i.e., auditory cortex for auditory stimuli, and visual cortex for visual stimuli), while alpha power was increased in domain unspecific cortical areas. Gamma band activity could be robustly mapped to stimulus parameters but was only weakly related to attentional state or behavioral performance. Alpha band activity was more related to cognitive state and performance than to stimulus features. Broadband gamma power changes were related to stimulus physical properties. Conclusion These results give new insights into the interplay between alpha and gamma oscillations within the human language network, here with a focus on phonological aspects, and the possible role of these oscillations in the processing of sensory stimuli and behavioral performance during selective attention.

Subjective Evaluation of the Speech Intelligibility on the Background of Noise and Reverberation

In this paper, the results of speech intelligibility subjective assessment of Ukrainian speech monosyllabic sound combinations against background noise and reverberation through articulation tests are presented. The evaluation was carried out with the help of specially developed software that allowed automating and thus greatly facilitating and accelerating the procedure of articulation tests. Special text and sound tables of the Ukrainian speech monosyllables of the consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) type were developed for the tests. The recordings of pure signals were made in the muffled room of the Acoustics and Acoustoelectronics Department of the National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute". The recording was performed at a frequency of 22050 Hz and a bit depth of 16 bits. Speech monosyllables were read using a verbal environment. Listening was done for four situations: pure language; speech distorted by noise; speech distorted by reverberation; speech distorted by the combined effect of noise and reverberation. In the first case, speech monosyllables of 3 articulation tables were listened, each of which contained 50 monosyllables. In the second case, speech distorted by the additive noise with the signal-to-noise ratios minus 10 dB, 0 dB and plus 10 dB was listened. In this case, models of white, pink and brown noises were used, the masking property of which is rather well-studied. In the third case, the reverberant speech for reverberation times from 0.3 to 2.7 s was modeled by convolution of pure speech signals with impulse characteristics of various rooms, and in the fourth case the joint action of pink noise and reverberation was considered. It turned out that the masking ability of white noise exceeds one for brown noise for signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) less than minus 5 dB, which is not entirely consistent with previous preliminary predictive estimates. Signals listening had been made by two ways, namely through the headphones and by means of acoustic monitors. The SNR varied in the range ‑10…+10 dB, and the reverberation time varied in the range 0.3…2.7 s. In addition, it turned out that listening to speech distorted by noise through acoustic monitors could lead to a significant increase in the intelligibility of speech, compared to the case of listening through headphones. With a signal-to-noise ratio of minus 10 dB, the values of speech intelligibility scores increased from 0.1-0.3 to 0.85-0.93. Similar results were obtained for the reverberation action: the speech intelligibility increased from 0.65 to 0.94 for the reverberation time of 2.7 s. This speech intelligibility growth can be explained, firstly, by the action of early reflections. Secondly, usage of two loudspeakers as sound sources and also binaural listening can be also considered as reasons of speech intelligibility increase. Nevertheless, these reasons for increasing the intelligibility of speech are hardly the only ones. Therefore, it is necessary to further study the causes of the revealed significant increase in speech intelligibility. Among such reasons can be both features of the developed automated system of articulation tests, and features of the psychophysical state of listeners.Ref. 13, fig. 5.

Does the Visual Channel Improve the Perception of Consonants Produced by Speakers of French With Down Syndrome?

This work evaluates whether seeing the speaker's face could improve the speech intelligibility of adults with Down syndrome (DS). This is not straightforward because DS induces a number of anatomical and motor anomalies affecting the orofacial zone. A speech-in-noise perception test was used to evaluate the intelligibility of 16 consonants (Cs) produced in a vowel-consonant-vowel context (Vo = /a/) by 4 speakers with DS and 4 control speakers. Forty-eight naïve participants were asked to identify the stimuli in 3 modalities: auditory (A), visual (V), and auditory-visual (AV). The probability of correct responses was analyzed, as well as AV gain, confusions, and transmitted information as a function of modality and phonetic features. The probability of correct response follows the trend AV > A > V, with smaller values for the DS than the control speakers in A and AV but not in V. This trend depended on the C: the V information particularly improved the transmission of place of articulation and to a lesser extent of manner, whereas voicing remained specifically altered in DS. The results suggest that the V information is intact in the speech of people with DS and improves the perception of some phonetic features in Cs in a similar way as for control speakers. This result has implications for further studies, rehabilitation protocols, and specific training of caregivers. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6002267.

Cretan Protolinear Script: The Sixth-Vowel Set of Syllabograms

This paper presents a set of eighteen signs of the Minoan scripts, used for syllables of the Consonant-Vowel (CV) type. What these eighteen syllabograms have in common is their vowel, which is a kind of “schwa”, treated here as the “sixth vowel” of the Minoan scripts, counted after the usual five vowels: “a”, “e”, “i”, “o” and “u”. Most of these syllabograms are considered to be of unknown phonetic value, while a few are known to be used for the Mycenaean Greek “αι” ([əj]). The presented approach is conducted according to the theory of the Protolinear script, being the script that all the Minoan scripts evolved from, including Linear A, Linear B and Cretan Hieroglyphics. A detailed study on the nature of that “schwa” and its evolution from - and to - related vowels precedes the presentation of the syllabograms. In conclusion, it is demonstrated that the phonetic value of each syllabogram corresponds to the Sumerian name (in a conservative dialect) of the object depicted by the syllabogram, thus more light is shed on the linguistic ancestry of the Minoan scripts, the practice followed for their creation and the phonetic values of eighteen hitherto un-transliterated syllabograms.

Psychophysical Boundary for Categorization of Voiced-Voiceless Stop Consonants in Native Japanese Speakers.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychophysical boundary used for categorization of voiced-voiceless stop consonants in native Japanese speakers. Twelve native Japanese speakers participated in the experiment. The stimuli were synthetic stop consonant-vowel stimuli varying in voice onset time (VOT) with manipulation of the amplitude of the initial noise portion and the first formant (F1) frequency of the periodic portion. There were 3 tasks, namely, speech identification to either /d/ or /t/, detection of the noise portion, and simultaneity judgment of onsets of the noise and periodic portions. The VOT boundaries of /d/-/t/ were close to the shortest VOT values that allowed for detection of the noise portion but not to those for perceived nonsimultaneity of the noise and periodic portions. The slopes of noise detection functions along VOT were as sharp as those of voiced-voiceless identification functions. In addition, the effects of manipulating the amplitude of the noise portion and the F1 frequency of the periodic portion on the detection of the noise portion were similar to those on voiced-voiceless identification. The psychophysical boundary of perception of the initial noise portion masked by the following periodic portion may be used for voiced-voiceless categorization by Japanese speakers.

Loudness of an auditory scene

When multiple sound sources, each of equal level, are added together to create an auditory scene, the overall level of the scene grows with the increased number of sources despite the fact that the level of the individual sound sources remains the same. This experiment addresses a simple question: how does the overall perceived loudness of an auditory scene change as the number of sound sources in the scene changes. Sixteen Consonant-Vowels (CVs), spoken by ten males and ten females, were the sound stimuli. The CVs could be concatenated to produce nonsense “words” of different lengths. Different number (“n”) of concatenated CVs could be presented at one time from a single loudspeaker located on the azimuth plane or from different loudspeakers. Listeners determined if “n + delta n” sound sources were louder than “n” sound sources. The individual levels of the concatenated CVs was another independent variable. Preliminary data suggest that when “n” is small (<4), the level of the individual sounds determines loudness judgements. When n is larger (n>4) the overall level of the simultaneously presented sounds determines loudness judgements. A full study will be presented. (Work supported by grants from NIDCD and Oculus VR, LLC.)

Developing finer-grained methods for analyzing word recognition performance by individuals with cochlear implants

Cochlear implant (CI) listeners experience overall improvement in speech recognition abilities, but a considerable amount of variability still remains among these individuals. Data from simulated CI listening conditions also show wide variability in monosyllabic word recognition ability. In an adverse simulated condition (2 spectral channels using sinusoidal carriers), the word score can be nearly 0 for some adults with normal hearing. These floor effects pose a challenge for researchers, as they lead to data compression. When analyzing the performance by phonemes, the increase in scores may remove the floor effect. The purpose of this study is to establish the chance performance rate for NU-6 consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word lists analyzed by phonemes. To determine this, we randomly paired words from the NU-6 list with CVC words from an on-line corpus of English, the English Lexicon Project, and scored the matches by phonemes using dictionary pronunciations. Thousands of runs of these random pairings were used to generate expected baseline accuracy ranges. These results were compared with individual, behavioral data from people listening to NU-6 words processed using 2-channel sinusoidal vocoders to determine if participants were performing better than chance when scoring by phonemes.

Sensorimotor Representation of Speech Perception. Cross-Decoding of Place of Articulation Features during Selective Attention to Syllables in 7T fMRI.

Sensorimotor integration, the translation between acoustic signals and motoric programs, may constitute a crucial mechanism for speech. During speech perception, the acoustic-motoric translations include the recruitment of cortical areas for the representation of speech articulatory features, such as place of articulation. Selective attention can shape the processing and performance of speech perception tasks. Whether and where sensorimotor integration takes place during attentive speech perception remains to be explored. Here, we investigate articulatory feature representations of spoken consonant-vowel (CV) syllables during two distinct tasks. Fourteen healthy humans attended to either the vowel or the consonant within a syllable in separate delayed-match-to-sample tasks. Single-trial fMRI blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses from perception periods were analyzed using multivariate pattern classification and a searchlight approach to reveal neural activation patterns sensitive to the processing of place of articulation (i.e., bilabial/labiodental vs. alveolar). To isolate place of articulation representation from acoustic covariation, we applied a cross-decoding (generalization) procedure across distinct features of manner of articulation (i.e., stop, fricative, and nasal). We found evidence for the representation of place of articulation across tasks and in both tasks separately: for attention to vowels, generalization maps included bilateral clusters of superior and posterior temporal, insular, and frontal regions; for attention to consonants, generalization maps encompassed clusters in temporoparietal, insular, and frontal regions within the right hemisphere only. Our results specify the cortical representation of place of articulation features generalized across manner of articulation during attentive syllable perception, thus supporting sensorimotor integration during attentive speech perception and demonstrating the value of generalization.

The Phoneme Identification Test for Assessment of Spectral and Temporal Discrimination Skills in Children: Development, Normative Data, and Test-Retest Reliability Studies.

Previous research suggests that a proportion of children experiencing reading and listening difficulties may have an underlying primary deficit in the way that the central auditory nervous system analyses the perceptually important, rapidly varying, formant frequency components of speech. The Phoneme Identification Test (PIT) was developed to investigate the ability of children to use spectro-temporal cues to perceptually categorize speech sounds based on their rapidly changing formant frequencies. The PIT uses an adaptive two-alternative forced-choice procedure whereby the participant identifies a synthesized consonant-vowel (CV) (/ba/ or /da/) syllable. CV syllables differed only in the second formant (F2) frequency along an 11-step continuum (between 0% and 100%-representing an ideal /ba/ and /da/, respectively). The CV syllables were presented in either quiet (PIT Q) or noise at a 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (PIT N). Development of the PIT stimuli and test protocols, and collection of normative and test-retest reliability data. Twelve adults (aged 23 yr 10 mo to 50 yr 9 mo, mean 32 yr 5 mo) and 137 typically developing, primary-school children (aged 6 yr 0 mo to 12 yr 4 mo, mean 9 yr 3 mo). There were 73 males and 76 females. Data were collected using a touchscreen computer. Psychometric functions were automatically fit to individual data by the PIT software. Performance was determined by the width of the continuum for which responses were neither clearly /ba/ nor /da/ (referred to as the uncertainty region [UR]). A shallower psychometric function slope reflected greater uncertainty. Age effects were determined based on raw scores. Z scores were calculated to account for the effect of age on performance. Outliers, and individual data for which the confidence interval of the UR exceeded a maximum allowable value, were removed. Nonparametric tests were used as the data were skewed toward negative performance. Across participants, the median value of the F2 range that resulted in uncertain responses was 33% in quiet and 40% in noise. There was a significant effect of age on the width of this UR (p < 0.00001) in both quiet and noise, with performance becoming adult like by age 9 on the PIT Q and age 10 on the PIT N. A skewed distribution toward negative performance occurred in both quiet (p = 0.01) and noise (p = 0.006). Median UR scores were significantly wider in noise than in quiet (T = 2041, p < 0.0000001). Performance (z scores) across the two tests was significantly correlated (r = 0.36, p = 0.000009). Test-retest z scores were significantly correlated in both quiet and noise (r = 0.4 and 0.37, respectively, p < 0.0001). The PIT normative data show that the ability to identify phonemes based on changes in formant transitions improves with age, and that some children in the general population have performance much worse than their age peers. In children, uncertainty increases when the stimuli are presented in noise. The test is suitable for use in planned studies in a clinical population.

Object-based attention modulates the discrimination of level increments in stop-consonant noise bursts.

This study tested the hypothesis that object-based attention modulates the discrimination of level increments in stop-consonant noise bursts. With consonant-vowel-consonant (CvC) words consisting of an ≈80-dB vowel (v), a pre-vocalic (Cv) and a post-vocalic (vC) stop-consonant noise burst (≈60-dB SPL), we measured discrimination thresholds (LDTs) for level increments (ΔL) in the noise bursts presented either in CvC context or in isolation. In the 2-interval 2-alternative forced-choice task, each observation interval presented a CvC word (e.g., /pæk/ /pæk/), and normal-hearing participants had to discern ΔL in the Cv or vC burst. Based on the linguistic word labels, the auditory events of each trial were perceived as two auditory objects (Cv-v-vC and Cv-v-vC) that group together the bursts and vowels, hindering selective attention to ΔL. To discern ΔL in Cv or vC, the events must be reorganized into three auditory objects: the to-be-attended pre-vocalic (Cv–Cv) or post-vocalic burst pair (vC–vC), and the to-be-ignored vowel pair (v–v). Our results suggest that instead of being automatic this reorganization requires training, in spite of using familiar CvC words. Relative to bursts in isolation, bursts in context always produced inferior ΔL discrimination accuracy (a context effect), which depended strongly on the acoustic separation between the bursts and the vowel, being much keener for the object apart from (post-vocalic) than for the object adjoining (pre-vocalic) the vowel (a temporal-position effect). Variability in CvC dimensions that did not alter the noise-burst perceptual grouping had minor effects on discrimination accuracy. In addition to being robust and persistent, these effects are relatively general, evincing in forced-choice tasks with one or two observation intervals, with or without variability in the temporal position of ΔL, and with either fixed or roving CvC standards. The results lend support to the hypothesis.

Identification of Thai students’ level of phonetic sensitivity in the imitation of Russian syllables

The article deals with the role of phonological sensitivity in the development of skills in a foreign language. In psycholinguistic terms, verbal communication in non-native language is a language contact. It is important that, in learning environments, the interaction of contacting languages should not be spontaneous, it should be taken into account in the modeling of verbal communication. Since the formation of mechanisms that ensure the speech activity of an individual in the language under study occurs under the influence of interference, it is necessary to study the manifestation of the specifics contacting linguistic systems in the perception of speech in a non-native language. To make the right decision – whether or not an incorrect perception of the phonemic composition of words occurs in the natural conditions of communication in a foreign language – is not possible. This requires a special phonetic experiment. The authors describe the results of an experiment aimed at revealing the phonetic sensitivity of native speakers of Thai. The material of the experiment was 260 syllables having the structure CV (consonant + vowel). Subjects who had not previously studied the Russian language had to listen to audio recordings of syllables pronunciation and reproduce them. Thus, the implementation of Russian vowels and consonants in the composition of syllables was analyzed. The authors succeeded in revealing the similarity and difference in the articulatory characteristics of the interacting languages’ sounds. It was found that when imitating Russian syllables the Thais are not aware of the opposition of consonants on the grounds of “hardness-softness” and “voiceless-voiced”. In this connection special work is required to produce soft sounds and to develop skills for distinguishing sounds from voiceless-voiced. During the study, it was confirmed that the influence of the native language is clearly manifested if it is functionally prevalent.

Syllables sound signal classification using multi-layer perceptron in varying number of hidden-layer and hidden-neuron

The research on signal processing of syllables sound signal is still the challenging tasks, due to non-stationary, speaker-dependent, variable context, and dynamic nature factor of the signal. In the process of classification using multi-layer perceptron (MLP), the process of selecting a suitable parameter of hidden neuron and hidden layer is crucial for the optimal result of classification. This paper presents a speech signal classification method by using MLP with various numbers of hidden-layer and hidden-neuron for classifying the Indonesian Consonant-Vowel (CV) syllables signal. Five feature sets were generated by using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Renyi Entropy, Autoregressive Power Spectral Density (AR-PSD) and Statistical methods. Each syllable was segmented at a certain length to form a CV unit. The results show that the average recognition of WRPSDS with 1, 2, and 3 hidden layers were 74.17%, 69.17%, and 63.03%, respectively.

Effects of Slow- and Fast-Acting Compression on Hearing-Impaired Listeners’ Consonant–Vowel Identification in Interrupted Noise

There is conflicting evidence about the relative benefit of slow- and fast-acting compression for speech intelligibility. It has been hypothesized that fast-acting compression improves audibility at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) but may distort the speech envelope at higher SNRs. The present study investigated the effects of compression with a nearly instantaneous attack time but either fast (10 ms) or slow (500 ms) release times on consonant identification in hearing-impaired listeners. Consonant–vowel speech tokens were presented at a range of presentation levels in two conditions: in the presence of interrupted noise and in quiet (with the compressor “shadow-controlled” by the corresponding mixture of speech and noise). These conditions were chosen to disentangle the effects of consonant audibility and noise-induced forward masking on speech intelligibility. A small but systematic intelligibility benefit of fast-acting compression was found in both the quiet and the noisy conditions for the lower speech levels. No detrimental effects of fast-acting compression were observed when the speech level exceeded the level of the noise. These findings suggest that fast-acting compression provides an audibility benefit in fluctuating interferers when compared with slow-acting compression while not substantially affecting the perception of consonants at higher SNRs.

Neural Mechanisms Underlying Cross-Modal Phonetic Encoding.

Audiovisual (AV) integration is essential for speech comprehension, especially in adverse listening situations. Divergent, but not mutually exclusive, theories have been proposed to explain the neural mechanisms underlying AV integration. One theory advocates that this process occurs via interactions between the auditory and visual cortices, as opposed to fusion of AV percepts in a multisensory integrator. Building upon this idea, we proposed that AV integration in spoken language reflects visually induced weighting of phonetic representations at the auditory cortex. EEG was recorded while male and female human subjects watched and listened to videos of a speaker uttering consonant vowel (CV) syllables /ba/ and /fa/, presented in Auditory-only, AV congruent or incongruent contexts. Subjects reported whether they heard /ba/ or /fa/. We hypothesized that vision alters phonetic encoding by dynamically weighting which phonetic representation in the auditory cortex is strengthened or weakened. That is, when subjects are presented with visual /fa/ and acoustic /ba/ and hear /fa/ (illusion-fa), the visual input strengthens the weighting of the phone /f/ representation. When subjects are presented with visual /ba/ and acoustic /fa/ and hear /ba/ (illusion-ba), the visual input weakens the weighting of the phone /f/ representation. Indeed, we found an enlarged N1 auditory evoked potential when subjects perceived illusion-ba, and a reduced N1 when they perceived illusion-fa, mirroring the N1 behavior for /ba/ and /fa/ in Auditory-only settings. These effects were especially pronounced in individuals with more robust illusory perception. These findings provide evidence that visual speech modifies phonetic encoding at the auditory cortex.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The current study presents evidence that audiovisual integration in spoken language occurs when one modality (vision) acts on representations of a second modality (audition). Using the McGurk illusion, we show that visual context primes phonetic representations at the auditory cortex, altering the auditory percept, evidenced by changes in the N1 auditory evoked potential. This finding reinforces the theory that audiovisual integration occurs via visual networks influencing phonetic representations in the auditory cortex. We believe that this will lead to the generation of new hypotheses regarding cross-modal mapping, particularly whether it occurs via direct or indirect routes (e.g., via a multisensory mediator).

Nasalization Amplitude-Timing Characteristics of Speakers With and Without Cleft Palate.

To examine the amplitude-temporal relationships of acoustic nasalization in speakers with a range of nasality and to determine the extent to which each domain independently predicts the speaker's perceived oral-nasal balance. Rate-controlled speech samples, consisting of /izinizi/, /azanaza/, and /uzunuzu/, were recorded from 18 participants (14 with repaired cleft palate and 4 without cleft palate) using the Nasometer. The mean nasalance of the entire mid-vowel-nasal consonant-vowel (mid-VNV) sequence (amplitude-domain) and the duration of the nasalized segment of the mid-VNV sequence (temporal-domain) were obtained based on nasalance contours. Strong linear and vowel-dependent relationships were observed between the 2 domains of nasalization (adjusted R2 = 71.5%). Both the amplitude- and temporal-domain measures were found to reliably predict the speaker's perceived oral-nasal balance, with better overall model fit and higher classification accuracy rates observed in /izinizi/ and /uzunuzu/ than in /azanaza/. Despite poor specificity, the temporal-domain measure of /azanaza/ was found to have a strong correlation with the participants' Zoo passage nasalance scores (rs = .897, p < .01), suggesting its potential utility as a severity indicator of perceived nasality. With the use of relatively simple speech tasks and measurements representing the amplitude and temporal domains of nasalization, the present study provided practical guidelines for using the Nasometer in assessing patients with oral-nasal resonance imbalance. Findings suggest that both domain measures of nasalization should be examined across different vowel contexts, given that each domain may provide clinically relevant, yet different, information.

Two distinct parsing stages in nonword reading aloud: Evidence from Russian.

Word reading partly depends on the activation of sublexical letter clusters. Previous research has studied which types of letter clusters have psychological saliency, but less is known about cognitive mechanisms of letter string parsing. Here, we take advantage of the high degree of context-dependency of the Russian orthography to examine whether consonant-vowel (CV) clusters are treated as units in two stages of sublexical processing. In two experiments using a nonword reading task, we use two orthogonal manipulations: (a) insertion of a visual disruptor (#) to assess whether CV clusters are kept intact during the early visual parsing stage, and (b) presence of context-dependent grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs; e.g., л[а] → /l/; л[я] → /lj/), to assess whether CV clusters remain intact or are split during the print-to-speech conversion stage. The results suggest that although CV clusters are initially processed as perceptual units in the early visual parsing stage, letters and not CV clusters drive print-to-speech conversion.

Maternal literate mediation of writing and Korean children’s reading and writing across 1 year

The present study examined the relations of maternal literate support instructions during parent–child joint writing to children’s word reading and writing across 1 year among 95 4- and 5-year-old children from Korea. The whole episode of mothers individually teaching their children how to write words was videotaped, and a Korean scale of mothers’ literate mediation of their children’s writing was developed based on six cognitive strategies focusing on whole Gulja (Korean written syllable), visual strokes, letter, Gulja structure, and CV (consonant + vowel) and coda (final consonant of a syllable) subsyllabic units. Maternal literate support explained a significant amount of variance in children’s word reading and writing concurrently and longitudinally across 1 year after controlling for children’s age, nonverbal IQ, phonological and morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming and mother’s education. In addition, children’s coda phoneme awareness explained unique variance in word reading and writing concurrently and longitudinally. Results underscore the unique characteristics of Korean and the importance of Korean maternal literate support as a major factor in early literacy development.

Neural network and GMM based feature mappings for consonant–vowel recognition in emotional environment

In this work, we propose a mapping function based feature transformation framework for developing consonant–vowel (CV) recognition system in the emotional environment. An effective way of conveying messages is by expressing emotions during human conversations. The characteristics of CV units differ from one emotion to other emotions. The performance of existing CV recognition systems is degraded in emotional environments. Therefore, we have proposed mapping functions based on artificial neural network and GMM models for increasing the accuracy of CV recognition in the emotional environment. The CV recognition system has been explored to transform emotional features to neutral features using proposed mapping functions at CV and phone levels to minimize mismatch between training and testing environments. Vowel onset and offset points have been used to identify vowel, consonant and transition segments. Transition segments are identified by considering initial 15% speech samples between vowel onset and offset points. The average performance of CV recognition system is increased significantly using feature mapping technique at phone level in three emotional environments (anger, happiness, and sadness).

From 'ah' to 'bah': social feedback loops for speech sounds at key points of developmental transition.

Social feedback is a driving force for speech development. A recent study provided a key finding to explain how contingent responses influence developmental change: infant speech-related vocalizations are contingent on responses to prior speech-related vocalizations (Warlaumont et al., 2014). However, the study did not distinguish between different speech-related vocalizations, vowel-like (V) and consonant-vowel (CV) vocalizations, which is important because CV vocalizations are a precursor to words. The present study explored parents' responses to infants' vocalizations and infants' subsequent vocal production at a point when vocalizations become more like adult speech. The relative proportion of CVs following contingent responses to CV did not differ between 10- and 12-months-olds; however, there was only a significant contingent relationship between responses to CV and subsequent CV production in 12-month-olds. Results suggest a developmental transition and a social feedback loop for the production of more developmentally advanced sounds when infants are learning their first words.

Does consonant–vowel skeletal structure play a role early in lexical processing? Evidence from masked priming

ABSTRACTIs the specific consonant–vowel (CV) letter combination of a word a basic source of information for lexical access in the early stages of processing? We designed two masked priming lexical decision experiments to respond to this question by directly examining the role of CV skeletal structure in written-word recognition. To that aim, each target word was preceded by a one-letter different nonword prime that kept the same CV skeletal structure or not. We also included an identity prime as a control. Results showed faster word identification times in the CV congruent condition than in the CV incongruent condition when a consonant was replaced from the target (paesaje–PAISAJE &lt; parsaje–PAISAJE), but not when it was a vowel (alusno–ALUMNO = alueno–ALUMNO). This dissociation poses problems for those accounts based on an early activation of the CV skeletal structure during lexical processing. Instead, this pattern of data favors the view that it is the word's consonant skeleton rather than the CV skeletal structure that is the key element in the early phases of word processing. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.