Perceptual Cues Research Articles

Human perception of cats' communicative cues: human‐cat communication goes multimodal

As a central key to apprehend the human-cat relationship, the question of how humans decode the behaviours expressed by their feline companions has drawn scientists’ attention in the past decades. To this point, previous studies have not investigated humans’ understanding of cats’ communicative cues in a multimodal perspective. While communication generally implies multiple channels, the influence of signal modality as relates to human-cat communication, is still poorly understood. Therefore, the primary aim of the present study was to investigate whether people can identify cats’ communicative information using unimodal (visual or vocal) and bimodal (visual and vocal) signals. Participants (n=630) were recruited via online advertisement on social media. Each participant viewed 24 carefully operationalised video clips of cats in different emotional/behavioural conditions. Four categories were included: contentment, discontentment, solicitation (food or attention) and predatory behaviour. Clips were presented as vocal only, visual only, or bimodal (visual and vocal cues). Video clips showing a bimodal expression were identified with the highest score (91,8% of correct ratings) compared with the visual only (87,3%) and the vocal only (72,2%). All modalities considered, contentment returned the highest identification score (90,1% correct), followed by solicitation (87,2%), then predatory behaviour (86,3%). Discontentment was the most difficult behaviour to be correctly identified (71,6%). Finally, for all behavioural categories and modalities, professionals working with animals returned a higher score than lay people (86.2% vs 82.9%). Taken together, our data underline the influence of the signal modality on interspecific communication between cats and humans. Information emitted by cats as a bimodal signal (visual and vocal) is better understood by humans than visual signals. The most difficult to decipher for humans are vocal signals emitted alone. A better understanding of humans’ abilities to understand their feline counterparts, could potentially help pet owners, and animal care practitioners to optimise cat care and welfare.

Use of gradient anticipatory nasal coarticulatory cues for lexical perception in French

The current study examines anticipatory nasal coarticulation in French, a language which is known to exhibit a) quality differences between phonemically oral and nasal vowels and b) relatively low amounts of nasal coarticulation in CVN contexts. In a production study, thirty native Northern Metropolitan (Parisian) French speakers produced seven sets of CṼ-CVC-CVN words (e.g., [sɛd] cède, [sɛn] scènes, [sæ̃] saint). Consistent with previous studies, results indicated quality differences between the vowels in CṼ versus CVC and CVN words, and also that acoustic nasalization in CVN contexts was relatively small; nevertheless, it was still significantly greater than in CVC contexts, and variable across speakers. In a perception study, the CV portions of the production recordings were played to fifty French listeners, who identified the corresponding word in a forced-choice task. Results showed that stimuli from CVN contexts were highly confusable with CVC items, but not with CṼ items. Most importantly, increased degree of acoustic nasalization on individual CVN stimuli significantly correlated with accuracy. We conclude that, despite the overall relative weakness of coarticulatory cues to nasality, French listeners can nevertheless employ these cues when they are stronger.

Analysis of the Level of Knowledge and Perceptions of Pregnant Women Regarding the PMTCT Program in Antenatal Services in Bukittinggi City

The problem with Prevention of mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) among pregnant women in Bukittinggi City is that there are still many pregnant women who do not carry out HIV tests. In 2021 K1 coverage is 95% but HIV screening coverage is only 45%, this shows that there are still many pregnant women who do not know their HIV status even though they have visited a health service facility. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between the level of knowledge and perceptions of pregnant women regarding the implementation of PMTCT. This research is a mix method study with systematic random sampling of 100 respondents. The results of bivariate analysis show the level of knowledge (p = 0.199), perceived vulnerability (p = 0.054), perceived severity (p = 0.916), perceived benefits (p = 0.993), perceived barriers (p = 0.360), perceived threats (p = 0.669 ) is not related to the implementation of PMTCT. Perception of cues to action (p=0.035) and support from health workers (p=0.007) were related to the implementation of PMTCT. Meanwhile, the results obtained from the multivariate analysis showed that the most significantly related variable was health workers (p = 0.005). Conclusion: The support provided by health workers is socialization and counseling, but not all health workers providing antenatal care have implemented this. Suggestions for Community Health Centers to optimize the implementation of counseling before and after HIV testing and for the Health Service to actively monitor the implementation of integrated ANC for all health workers providing antenatal care. Keywords: Knowledge, perception, pregnant women

Short-term observation of electrical acoustic stimulation in patients with low frequency residual hearing after cochlear implant

Objective: To analyze the effects of electrical acoustic stimulation (EAS) on speech and tone recognition as well as music perception in children with low-frequency residual hearing (LFRH) after cochlear implant (CI). Methods: A total of twelve Mandarin patients with LFRH who underwent unilateral CI from January 2017 to October 2020 were recruited, including 8 males and 4 females. There were 5 cases of pre-lingual deafness and 7 cases of post-lingual deafness. The median age at implantation was 12 years old (3-62 years). All patients had residual hearing (RH) before surgery, wore hearing aid (HA) timely, had an effective rehabilitation and the duration of use of electrical stimulation was 37.0±16.2 months. On the implanted side, the thresholds of 125 Hz and 250 Hz were less than and equal to 80 dB HL after implantation. A two-month follow-up clinical study was conducted with the EAS devices. The EAS effects were evaluated before, immediately after and 2 months after upgrade, including speech recognition rate, tone recognition and music tests. SPSS 23.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Results: A total of ten patients completed a two-month clinical follow-up and efficiency evaluation. Compared to the electrical stimulation, the recognition rate of spondee word significantly decreased after the immediate use of EAS (71.7±4.3 vs 79.6±3.1, P=0.018). Compared to the electrical stimulation as well as immediate use of EAS, the results of sentence in noise, tone in noise, and SRT of sentence in noise were all significantly improved at 2 months after use of EAS (P<0.05). The pitch discrimination was significantly improved at 2 months after the use of EAS compared with that before the use of EAS (P=0.042). Compared with before (P=0.021) and immediately (P=0.017) use of EAS, the ability of rhythm resolution was significantly improved. There were no significant differences in other test results (P>0.05). Conclusions: The low-frequency acoustic information provided by EAS as well as the electrical-acoustic stimulation mode can provide rich auditory cues of speech perception in noise, tone recognition in noise, and musical discrimination for CI subjects. It can promote the improvement of complex listening ability of CI patients undergoing long-term electrical stimulation in a short time and comprehensively improve their hearing capacities.

Pulling the wool over their eyes? Object permanence, numerical competence and categorisation in alternative livestock species

The adaptive abilities of grazing livestock species are not well understood, despite the potential link between behaviour driven decision making and the overall productive efficiency of the animal through foraging strategy. This study aimed to assess and compare these adaptive behaviours, relating to i) object permanence, ii) numerical competence, and iii) categorisation capabilities of domesticated species that possess distinctly different digestive physiologies and backgrounds. Seven animals from each species, including sheep (Ovis aries) (avg. 5 years of age, 60 kg initial weight), goats (Capra hircus) (avg. 3 years, 45 kg initial weight), and alpacas (Lama pacos (Linnaeus, 1758)) (avg. 3 years, 70 kg initial weight), were presented with a total of nine choice tasks, grouped relative to the three abilities being tested (object permanence, numerical competence, and categorisation). Specifically, the stage of object permanence for each subject was tested based on their ability to solve simple visible displacement, to overcome perseveration error, and double invisible displacement tasks. Subjects were also presented with a two-choice task of different open-centre and filled shapes to assess the capacity for simple discrimination and open-ended categorisation. Lastly, numerical competence was compared across five trials consisting of different ratios and volumes of food reward. A basic awareness of object permanence was found in all subjects. Overall, the goats demonstrated the greatest capacity for object permanence across the three species, particularly when presented with more complex three-cup A-not-B tasks. This increase in complexity had no significant effect on goat performance as a group (p = 0.13), whereas alpaca (p = 0.0005) and sheep performance significantly declined (p = 0.04). We also found no evidence to demonstrate contrasting cognitive capabilities between these species in relation to spontaneous numerical cognition (p > 0.05), or in the use of perceptual cues in open-ended categorisation (p = 0.246). This study is the first instance of multiple direct comparisons of cognitive capability across domesticated livestock species. Furthermore, this work is the first account of object permanence, numerical competence and categorisation in alpacas, as well as object permanence in sheep and numerical competence in sheep and goats. This information could prove useful to predict the outcome of interaction between these species in a grazing context and for inferences relating to behaviour driven decision making, such as foraging strategy, and the overall productive efficiency of the animal. Here, we conclude that the three species tested possess comparable capacity for physical cognition in the tasks discussed.

Performance on a target acquisition task differs between augmented reality and touch screen displays

Target acquisition tasks quantify human motor and perceptual abilities while performing discrete tasks to support interface design and sensorimotor assessments. This study investigated the effects of display, Touchscreen and Augmented Reality (AR), on a standardized 2D multidirectional target acquisition task. Thirty-two participants performed the target acquisition task with both modality types and at two indexes of difficulty. The touchscreen modality yielded improved performance over AR as measured by accuracy, precision, error rates, throughput, and movement time. Throughput using the nominal index of difficulty was 10.12 bits/s for touchscreen and 3.11 bits/s for AR. AR designers can use the results to improve performance when designing AR interfaces by selecting larger buttons when accuracy and efficiency are required and by embedding perception cues to button target surfaces such as depth and proximity cues.

Visual Cue Effects on a Classification Accuracy Estimation Task in Immersive Scatterplots.

Immersive visualization in virtual reality (VR) allows us to exploit visual cues for perception in 3D space, yet few existing studies have measured the effects of visual cues. Across a desktop monitor and a head-mounted display (HMD), we assessed scatterplot designs which vary their use of visual cues-motion, shading, perspective (graphical projection), and dimensionality-on two sets of data. We conducted a user study with a summary task in which 32 participants estimated the classification accuracy of an artificial neural network from the scatterplots. With Bayesian multilevel modeling, we capture the intricate visual effects and find that no cue alone explains all the variance in estimation error. Visual motion cues generally reduce participants' estimation error; besides this motion, using other cues may increase participants' estimation error. Using an HMD, adding visual motion cues, providing a third data dimension, or showing a more complicated dataset leads to longer response times. We speculate that most visual cues may not strongly affect perception in immersive analytics unless they change people's mental model about data. In summary, by studying participants as they interpret the output from a complicated machine learning model, we advance our understanding of how to use the visual cues in immersive analytics.

Effect of binocular vision during target shooting in archery.

This study aimed to evaluate the difference between binocular and monocular vision and eye movements during the competition using video-oculography (VOG). Experiment 1 included 14 participants to evaluate differences in arrow convergence. Then, seven participants in Experiment 1 were randomly selected and included in Experiment 2, which evaluated eye movements during archery using VOG. The target used an 80-cm waterproof target face and was set at a distance of 30 m. All players shot the target 36 times using their bows and arrows. Experiments 1 and 2 evaluated the distribution of arrows in each score and the number of focus points, respectively, between binocular and monocular conditions. The arrows, which include the area of 9 points, were significantly greater in the binocular condition (11.85 ± 5.04 shots) than in the monocular condition (9.36 ± 5.41 shots) in Experiment 1 (P = 0.047). The players focused on the target under both binocular and monocular conditions, although the players were switching off fixation between the target and shooting sight under the binocular condition in Experiment 2. These behaviors indicated that the players were trying to accurately shoot the target by exploring the distance between themselves and the target as a cue for depth perception.

Primacy of mouth over eyes to perceive audiovisual Mandarin lexical tones.

The visual cues of lexical tones are more implicit and much less investigated than consonants and vowels, and it is still unclear what facial areas contribute to facial tones identification. This study investigated Chinese and English speakers' eye movements when they were asked to identify audiovisual Mandarin lexical tones. The Chinese and English speakers were presented with an audiovisual clip of Mandarin monosyllables (for instance, /ă/, /à/, /ĭ/, /ì/) and were asked to identify whether the syllables were a dipping tone (/ă/, / ĭ/) or a falling tone (/ à/, /ì/). These audiovisual syllables were presented in clear, noisy and silent (absence of audio signal) conditions. An eye-tracker recorded the participants' eye movements. Results showed that the participants gazed more at the mouth than the eyes. In addition, when acoustic conditions became adverse, both the Chinese and English speakers increased their gaze duration at the mouth rather than at the eyes. The findings suggested that the mouth is the primary area that listeners utilise in their perception of audiovisual lexical tones. The similar eye movements between the Chinese and English speakers imply that the mouth acts as a perceptual cue that provides articulatory information, as opposed to social and pragmatic information.

The moderating influence of celebrity endorsement on intention to engage in infection prevention behaviours.

Although the use of celebrities for communication within social marketing to influence voluntary behaviour change has received significant attention, its application to promote infection preventive behaviours, such as frequent handwashing with soap, has received limited attention. Using the health belief model (HBM), the study examined the moderating effect of celebrity endorsement (CE) on the relationship between the predictors of HBM such as perceived severity, susceptibility, benefits, barriers, self-efficacy and target audiences' intention to avoid handshaking, frequently wash hands with soap and cover mouth with an elbow when coughing. Data from 562 respondents were analysed using PLS-SEM. The result shows that CE significantly moderate the relationship between target audiences' perception of severity, susceptibility, self-efficacy and cues to action and intention to perform the recommended infection preventive behaviours. Thus, when a celebrity is employed as a conduit for delivering a social marketing message, particularly about infection preventive behaviour, target audiences are more likely to take action to perform the recommended behaviour. Theoretically, the study shows that although the HBM has been extensively applied to explain health-related behaviours, using celebrities to endorse the various constructs of the HBM significantly enhances the predictive ability of the model.

Factors that Influence People’s Beliefs About Men’s and Women’s Jealousy Responses

This study examines what beliefs people hold about other men’s and women’s reaction to infidelity and how related these beliefs are to one’s own jealousy response and to various socio-cultural influences. This novel approach was examined in a Facebook snowball sample (N = 1213) who responded to three infidelity scenarios regarding what aspect of infidelity (emotional or sexual) they believed would make men and women more jealous and then what aspect would make themselves more jealous. The results suggest that both men and women believed men would be more upset by the sexual aspect of infidelity and that women would be more upset by the emotional aspect (i.e., falling in love). Own jealousy responses in men and women were strongly associated with beliefs about same-sex responses to infidelity and showed moderate association with beliefs about opposite-sex responses. Self-reported perceptions of cues to infidelity and knowledge from various sources about what (1) may be cues to infidelity and (2) may be typical reactions to infidelity were unrelated to beliefs about men’s and women’s jealousy responses and to own jealousy responses. We discuss whether beliefs about men’s and women’s jealousy responses may be culturally transmitted or more likely involve a dual model consisting of (a) reflection of own jealousy responses with (b) some cross-sex insights into jealousy reactions in men and women. The findings suggest that there may be evolved psychological adaptations for jealousy beliefs that extend to others of same and opposite sex.

What makes deceptive online reviews? A linguistic analysis perspective

AbstractWith the rapid development of e-commerce, online reviews have become an important information source for consumers and e-commerce businesses. While the negative impact of deceptive online reviews has been well recognized, more research has to be done to help understand the linguistic manifestations of deceptive online reviews in order to help identify deceptive reviews and help increase the value and sustainability of e-commerce businesses. This study explores the linguistic manifestations of deceptive online reviews based on the reality monitoring theory, and then uses the data from Amazon.com online product reviews to examine perceptual cues, affective cues, detail cues, relevance cues, and cognitive cues of various deceptive online reviews. The results show that reviews for emotional catharsis are more extreme with affective cues, while perfunctory reviews often lack details with fewer prepositions and adjectives. In addition, deceptive reviews often lack relevance cues when these reviews are made to obtain the rewards provided by the vendors while paid posters tend to use more cognitive cues in deceptive reviews. Moreover, deceptive online reviews under all motives often lack perceptual cues. These findings provide a deeper understanding of the linguistic manifestations of deceptive online reviews and provide significant managerial implications for e-commerce businesses to employ high-quality online reviews for sustainable growth.

Phonological discrimination and contrast detection in pupillometry.

The perception of phonemes is guided by both low-level acoustic cues and high-level linguistic context. However, differentiating between these two types of processing can be challenging. In this study, we explore the utility of pupillometry as a tool to investigate both low- and high-level processing of phonological stimuli, with a particular focus on its ability to capture novelty detection and cognitive processing during speech perception. Pupillometric traces were recorded from a sample of 22 Danish-speaking adults, with self-reported normal hearing, while performing two phonological-contrast perception tasks: a nonword discrimination task, which included minimal-pair combinations specific to the Danish language, and a nonword detection task involving the detection of phonologically modified words within sentences. The study explored the perception of contrasts in both unprocessed speech and degraded speech input, processed with a vocoder. No difference in peak pupil dilation was observed when the contrast occurred between two isolated nonwords in the nonword discrimination task. For unprocessed speech, higher peak pupil dilations were measured when phonologically modified words were detected within a sentence compared to sentences without the nonwords. For vocoded speech, higher peak pupil dilation was observed for sentence stimuli, but not for the isolated nonwords, although performance decreased similarly for both tasks. Our findings demonstrate the complexity of pupil dynamics in the presence of acoustic and phonological manipulation. Pupil responses seemed to reflect higher-level cognitive and lexical processing related to phonological perception rather than low-level perception of acoustic cues. However, the incorporation of multiple talkers in the stimuli, coupled with the relatively low task complexity, may have affected the pupil dilation.

The impact of threat of shock-induced anxiety on alerting, orienting, and executive function in women: an ERP study.

The present study used a combination of the Threat-of-Shock paradigm and the Attention Network Test (ANT) to investigate how induced anxiety affects alerting, orienting, and executive control and whether individual differences in threat sensitivity moderate these effects. Forty-two female subjects completed the ANT task in alternation under shock-threat and no-shock ("safe") conditions while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The results showed that anxiety induced by the threat of shock had a significant impact on alerting and executive control functions at the neural level. Specifically, alerting-related N1 and stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) differences between double cue and no cue conditions were greater in the threat versus safe state, suggesting that the induced anxiety promoted the early perception of cues and preparation for the target. Moreover, executive control-related P3 and sustained potential (SP) differences between incongruent and congruent trials were greater in the threat versus safe state, indicating that the induced anxiety might improve the attentional allocation efficiency and stimulate subjects to recruit more cognitive resources to resolve conflicts. However, orienting-related ERPs were not affected by the threat of shock, but the threat of shock promoted the processing efficiency of spatial-cue at the behavioral level. Analysis of individual differences revealed that trait anxiety moderated the attentional allocation efficiency when performing executive control related tasks in the threat versus safe state. Our findings demonstrate the adaptive significance of the threat of shock-induced anxiety in that being in an anxious state can enhance individuals' alerting, orienting, and executive functions.

Response to visual and mechano-acoustic predator cues is robust to ocean warming and acidification and is highly variable in European sea bass

Predator-prey interactions and, especially, the success of anti-predator responses are modulated by the sensory channels of vision, olfaction, audition and mechanosensation. If climate change alters fish sensory ability to avoid predation, community dynamics can be affected. We investigated whether mid-duration exposure to warming and/or acidification alters behavioural response to visual or mechano-acoustic predator cues in juvenile Dicentrarchus labrax. We measured kinematic variables before and after a visual or a mechano-acoustic challenge which mimicked an overflying bird shadow or a bird swoop attack, respectively. Due to large interindividual variability in responses before cue presentation, fish were categorized as slow and fast to account for baseline individual variability. Treatment did not impact kinematic variables as both slow and fast fish of every treatment elicited precautionary and escape responses. Interestingly, even slow fish swam as fast as fast fish after the cue, suggesting that regardless of initial category, fish managed to escape facing a danger. Anti-predator response varied according to the level of threat to survival with greater responses elicited after the swoop attack. Although wild juvenile sea bass aggregate in schools, school dynamics rely on single leaders which highlights the importance of the variability in individual behaviours. We demonstrated that anti-predator response in juvenile D. labrax is robust to mid-duration exposure to independent and combined effects of warming and acidification. If robustness is confirmed over long-duration, it could provide D. labrax with an evolutionary advantage in the future ocean, where cue transmission through changing environments can further modulate cue perception and predator-prey interactions.

Mutual Avoidance in the Spectacled Salamander and Centipede: A Discrepancy between Exploratory Field and Laboratory Data.

Interactions between amphibians and arthropods encompass a wide range of ecological relationships, predominantly characterized by predator-prey dynamics, with adult amphibians as the predators. In some instances, the roles are reversed. This study focuses on the potential predator-prey relationship between the spectacled salamander (Salamandrina perspicillata) and the centipede Scolopendra cingulata in Central Italy. Building upon previous research on chemical cue perception in amphibians, we investigated potential olfactory cue-mediated avoidance behaviours exhibited by S. perspicillata towards the potential predator S. cingulata through field observations and manipulative experiments. In a natural site, we estimated the degree of negative co-occurrence between the study species under shelters and found an avoidance pattern between S. perspicillata and S. cingulata in refuges. However, when the study species were forced to choose between sharing or not sharing a given shelter, through a manipulative experiment, the avoidance pattern was not confirmed. Potential determinants contributing to the avoidance pattern observed in nature are discussed. Our exploratory results represent a good example of how what often appears to be a strong observation-based pattern in natural settings needs to be carefully scrutinized. Hypotheses testing through experiments in controlled environments remains a valuable approach to exclude potentially misleading processes.

Research on deep reinforcement learning basketball robot shooting skills improvement based on end to end architecture and multi-modal perception.

In the realm of basketball, refining shooting skills and decision-making levels using intelligent agents has garnered significant interest. This study addresses the challenge by introducing an innovative framework that combines multi-modal perception and deep reinforcement learning. The goal is to create basketball robots capable of executing precise shots and informed choices by effectively integrating sensory inputs and learned strategies. The proposed approach consists of three main components: multi-modal perception, deep reinforcement learning, and end-to-end architecture. Multi-modal perception leverages the multi-head attention mechanism (MATT) to merge visual, motion, and distance cues for a holistic perception of the basketball scenario. The deep reinforcement learning framework utilizes the Deep Q-Network (DQN) algorithm, enabling the robots to learn optimal shooting strategies over iterative interactions with the environment. The end-to-end architecture connects these components, allowing seamless integration of perception and decision-making processes. The experiments conducted demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Basketball robots equipped with multi-modal perception and deep reinforcement learning exhibit improved shooting accuracy and enhanced decision-making abilities. The multi-head attention mechanism enhances the robots' perception of complex scenes, leading to more accurate shooting decisions. The application of the DQN algorithm results in gradual skill improvement and strategic optimization through interaction with the environment. The integration of multi-modal perception and deep reinforcement learning within an end-to-end architecture presents a promising avenue for advancing basketball robot training and performance. The ability to fuse diverse sensory inputs and learned strategies empowers robots to make informed decisions and execute accurate shots. The research not only contributes to the field of robotics but also has potential implications for human basketball training and coaching methodologies.

Parietal cortical alpha/beta suppression during prospective memory retrieval.

Prospective memory (PM) impairment is among the most frequent memory complaints, yet little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. PM for a planned intention may be achieved through strategic monitoring of the environment for cues, involving ongoing attentional processes, or through spontaneous retrieval. We hypothesized that parietal spectral power modulation accompanies prospectively encoded intention retrieval, irrespective of PM retrieval approach. A cognitively engaging arithmetic-based ongoing task (OGT) was employed to encourage spontaneous retrieval, with a focal, internally generated PM cue to eliminate OGT/PM trial differentiation based on perceptual or conceptual PM cue features. Two PM repetition frequencies were used to vary the extent of strategic monitoring. We observed a transient parietal alpha/beta spectral power reduction directly preceding the response, which was distinguishable on a single trial basis, as revealed by an OGT/PM trial classification rate exceeding 70% using linear discriminant analysis. The alpha/beta idling rhythm reflects cortical inhibition. A disengagement of task-relevant neural assemblies from this rhythm, reflected in alpha/beta power reduction, is deemed to increase information content, facilitate information integration, and enable engagement of neural assemblies in task-related cortical networks. The observed power reduction is consistent with the Dual Pathways model, where PM strategies converge at the PM retrieval stage.

Vowel perception under prominence: Examining the roles of F0, duration, and distributional information.

This study investigates how prosodic prominence mediates the perception of American English vowels, testing the effects of F0 and duration. In Experiment 1, the perception of four vowel continua varying in duration and formants (high: /i-ɪ/, /u-ʊ/, non-high: /ɛ-ae/, /ʌ-ɑ/), was examined under changes in F0-based prominence. Experiment 2 tested if cue usage varies as the distributional informativity of duration as a cue to prominence is manipulated. Both experiments show that duration is a consistent vowel-intrinsic cue. F0-based prominence affected perception of vowels via compensation for peripheralization of prominent vowels in the vowel space. Longer duration and F0-based prominence further enhanced the perception of formant cues. The distributional manipulation in Experiment 2 exerted a minimal impact. Findings suggest that vowel perception is mediated by prominence in a height-dependent manner which reflects patterns in the speech production literature. Further, duration simultaneously serves as an intrinsic cue and serves a prominence-related function in enhancing perception of formant cues.

Interrupted mosaic speech revisited: Gain and loss of stretching on intelligibility

Periodicity and temporal fine structure provide a perceptual cue to connect speech fragments when the speech is interrupted. In mosaic speech stimuli, which are noise-vocoded with stepwise amplitude and spectral envelopes, interruption drastically reduces intelligibility because of lacking the perceptual cue. Here we report that the intelligibility of mosaic speech stimuli, consisting of 20 frequency bands and 20-ms segment duration, decreased from 95% to 78% and 33% when they were interrupted by 20- and 80-ms gaps. However, when the mosaic segments were stretched to fill the silent gaps, the intelligibility improved again to 92% and 54%, resulting in gains of 14% and 21% respectively. By contrast, intelligibility dropped by 7% with stretching and filling 160-ms gaps. The intelligibility minimums (9%–16%) were observed at the 160-ms original gap duration irrespective of stretching ratios. It is possible that stretching with short gaps effectively restored the original amplitude envelopes, whereas, with long gaps, the effect was detrimental. Furthermore, a probability summation model with a short and a long integration window, by which the intelligibility minimums were predicted for lowpass-filtered interrupted speech stimuli, seems to be highly relevant to the current results.