Phoneme Perception Research Articles

Perception of General British monophthongs

The paper presents an experimental study on the perception of the Gen-eral British monophthongs that was conducted in three stages in 2014–2018. The vowels observed are studied by (i) comparing the vowel sys-tems of General British and Slovene, and (ii) by conducting an experi-ment on their perception. The analysis focuses on the participants’ over-all performance, their most frequent misperceptions, and their progress over the course of one semester. The results indicate: that the previously observed production difficulties mirror perception difficulties; that the discriminative failures of FL vowels are not entirely predictable by com-paring vowel systems; that new sound contrasts are assimilated in differ-ent ways; and that the participants’ perception of foreign language pho-nemes can benefit from explicit instruction.

The study of written speech of younger students with articulatory and acoustic dysgraphia

Introduction. The article is devoted to the actual problem of the study of writing disorders inIn the written works of the study participants, specific errors were found associated with violations of sound pronunciation, violations of phonemic hearing and phonemic perception. This indicates that articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia most students participating in the study. In this article, the authors described in detail the stages of the study and presented its diagnostic program, analyzed the results obtained during the study. And also formulated conclusions that confirm the need for continuous diagnosis and prevention of violations of written speech.Materials and methods. The study of the features of the written speech of younger students with articulatory-acoustic dysgraphy was carried out in several stages. At the stage of analysis of pedagogical documentation, speech cards of primary school students were investigated. During the study of the writing process, students wrote dictation and exposition. These types of works differ significantly in the structure of their implementation, which led to this choice. The lexical material was selected in accordance with the requirements of the training program of students-participants of the study. The study of the sound-pronouncing side of speech included the study of pronunciation of all groups of sounds of the Russian language in all participants of the study. The nature and degree of violation of sound reproduction were determined. The results of the study were interpreted on the basis of a qualitative and quantitative approach.The results of the study: the study revealed that articulatory-acoustic dysgraphia is one of the most common types of violations of written speech. Specific errors in written works occur both in younger students with dysgraphia, and in students who have no indication of violations of written speech. As a result of qualitative analysis of dictation and presentation of students revealed that a significant number of children are not fully formed the skill of writing the presentation. Children can not fully disclose the topic, there are isolated errors in the construction of phrases. Along with this, children in written works missed some moments of the action, there was a violation of the coherence of the story. In the written works of children there is a significant number of spelling errors. In the study of sound pronunciation, it was revealed that the most mistakes children made when differentiating sounds by sonority-deafness.Discussions and conclusions. Based on the results of the study conclusions were drawn: articulatory-acoustic dysgraphy is the most common in this group of study participants; specific errors and violations of sound are observed in most children regardless of whether dysgraphy is detected or not. These studies convincingly prove the need for constant monitoring of the state of written speech of all students, determine the importance of developing methodological recommendations aimed at the prevention and correction of articulatory and acoustic dysgraphy.

이집트 한국어 학습자들의 한국어 음소 학습용이성*

This paper examines the perception of Korean phonemes by Egyptian learners of Korean and presents the learnability gradient of Korean consonants and vowels through High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT). 50 Egyptian learners of Korean (27 low proficiency learners and 23 high proficiency learners) participated in 10 sessions of HVPT for Korean vowels, word initial and final consonants. Participants were tested on their identification ability of Korean vowels, word initial consonants, and syllable codas before and after the training. The results showed that both low and high proficiency groups did benefit from the training. Low proficiency learners showed a higher improvement rate than high proficiency learners. Based on the HVPT results, a learnability gradient was established to give insights into priorities in teaching Korean sounds to Egyptian learners.

Basic auditory processing deficits in infants at risk for dyslexia during the sensitive period predict future language

It is widely agreed that poor reading and spelling performances in individuals with developmental dyslexia underlie problems with processing phonetic units. According to recent child and adult data, such processing deficits likely are the consequence of compromised low-level auditory processing. A possible causal relationship can be explored by testing infants based on their familial risk of dyslexia. Using magnetoencephalography, the study at hand investigates low-level auditory processing in infants at risk for dyslexia across 6 and 12 months of age—a sensitive period in early language development when the auditory system specializes in native phoneme perception. Results showed smaller and shorter neural responses to simple sounds in at-risk infants at 6 than at 12 months, a pattern that was reversed in age-matched typically developing infants. This interaction was significant both when fitting equivalent current dipoles and when using distributed source modeling and localized to left temporal and left frontal brain regions, indicating its potential impact on early language learning. In addition, atypical auditory responses in at-risk infants consistently predicted later language skills, such as syntactic processing and word production, thus identifying a possible biomarker of dyslexia in the infant brain.

Perception of Unfamiliar English Phonemes by Native Mandarin Speakers

In second language acquisition, speech sounds, or phonemes, not present in a learner’s native language often pose an extra challenge for speech production. When hearing one of these unfamiliar phonemes, the learner either maps it to a similar native phoneme, perceives it as a completely foreign sound, or does not perceive it as speech at all. In the first case, the learner is unable to perceive a difference between the unfamiliar phoneme and the native phoneme to which it is mapped. This mapping difficulty potentially creates problems for the learner during word recognition. The present research investigated the extent to which English phonemes absent from the Mandarin phonological inventory impact processing of native Mandarin speakers in an auditory lexical decision task. Results of this research will expand the understanding of second language perception, especially within the context of auditory lexical decision tasks. A list of ten phonemes—/ɪ/, /æ/, /ʊ/, /ɛ/, /v/, /z/, /ʒ/, /ɵ/, /ð/, /ʤ/—present in the English phonological inventory but absent from that of Mandarin were identified as unfamiliar to native Mandarin speakers. Data from the Massive Auditory Lexical Decision (MALD) database, in which participants decided whether recorded utterances were English words or made-up words, were utilized. The effects of the proportion of unfamiliar phonemes, proportion of unfamiliar vowels, and proportion of unfamiliar consonants on reaction time, representative of processing difficulty, were then calculated using statistical techniques. It was found that the proportion of all unfamiliar phonemes in an utterance had no significant effect on the reaction time of the native Mandarin speakers. However, when the list of unfamiliar phonemes was divided into vowels and consonants, a greater proportion of unfamiliar vowels was noticed to increase reaction time, while a greater proportion of unfamiliar consonants was found to decrease reaction time. Further research in this area is required to determine a concrete explanation for these results. Interestingly, when the same analysis was performed on the data of native English speakers, similar results were observed. This may reflect a common language processing mechanism in second language learners and native speakers.

Investigating Native English Speakers’ Perception of Novel Arabic Phonemes after First Exposure

This study reports on an experiment carried out to investigate native English speakers' perception of selected Arabic phonemes after first exposure to a controlled naturalistic input of a weather report. It closely follows Brown's model of L2 speech perception and L1 feature geometry (1998), which seeks to relate theories of segmental phonology to L2 speech perception and the first exposure treatment of Gullberg et al. (2010). Eight Arabic sounds were carefully selected for the experiment: /b/-/d/ which are found in both English and Arabic; /x/-/ɣ/ which are not found in English but are distinguished by features which are distinctive in English [dorsal, voice, continuant], and lastly the contrastive pairs /ʔ/-/ʕ/ and /h/-/ħ/, where the latter phoneme in each pair is alien to the phonemic inventory of English. These pairs are distinguished by the feature [RTR (retracted tongue root)] which is lacking in the feature geometry of English. Participants were divided into an Arabic control group, English+ group with prior exposure to Arabic, and an English group with no prior exposure to Arabic. The results from an AX discrimination task confirmed Brown's hypothesis that L2 perception of non-native contrasts is constrained by the L1 feature geometry.

A thirteenth-century theory of speech.

This historical paper examines a pioneering theory of speech production and perception from the thirteenth century. Robert Grosseteste (c.1175—1253) was a celebrated medieval thinker, who developed an impressive corpus of treatises on the natural world. This paper looks at his treatise on sound and phonetics, De generatione sonorum [On the Generation of Sounds]. Through interdisciplinary analysis of the text, this paper finds a theory of vowel production and perception that is notably mathematical, with a formulation of vowel space rooted in combinatorics. Specifically, Grosseteste constructs a categorical space comprising three fundamental types of movements pertaining to the vocal apparatus: linear, circular, and dilational-constrictional; these correspond to similarity transformations of translation, rotation, and uniform scaling, respectively. That Grosseteste's space is categorical, and low-dimensional, is remarkable vis-a-vis current theories of phoneme perception. As well as his description of vowel space, Grosseteste also sets out a hypothetical framework of multisensory integration, uniting the production, perception, and representation in writing of vowels with a set of geometric figures associated with “mental images.” This has clear resonances with contemporary studies of motor facilitation during speech perception and audiovisual speech. This paper additionally provides an experimental foray, illustrating the coherence of mathematical and scientific thinking underpinning this early theory.

Revealing the Dynamic Brain Connectivity from Perception of Speech Sound to Semantic Processing by EEG

Understanding brain processing mechanisms from the perception of speech sounds to high-level semantic processing is vital for effective human–robot communication. In this study, 128-channel electroencephalograph (EEG) signals were recorded when subjects were listening to real and pseudowords in Mandarin. By using an EEG source reconstruction method and a sliding-window Granger causality analysis, we analyzed the dynamic brain connectivity patterns. Results showed that the bilateral temporal cortex (lTC and rTC), the bilateral motor cortex (lMC and rMC), the frontal cortex (FC), and the occipital cortex (OC) were recruited in the process, with complex patterns in the real word condition than in the pseudoword condition. The spatial pattern is basically consistent with previous functional MRI studies on the understanding of spoken Chinese. For the real word condition, speech perception and processing involved different connection patterns in the initial phoneme perception and processing phase, the phonological processing and lexical selection phase, and the semantic integration phase. Specifically, compared with pseudowords, a hub region in the FC and unique patterns of lMC → rMC and lTC → FC connectivity were found during processing real words after 180 ms, while a distributed network of temporal, motor, and frontal brain areas was involved after 300 ms. This may be related to semantic processing and integration. The involvement of both bottom-up input and top-down modulation in real word processing may support the previously proposed TRACE model. In sum, the findings of this study suggest that representations of speech involve dynamic interactions among distributed brain regions that communicate through time-specific functional networks.

Remediation of Allophonic Perception and Visual Attention Span in Developmental Dyslexia: A Joint Assay.

Categorical perception of phonemes and visual attention span are cognitive processes that contribute independently to poor reading skills in developmental dyslexia. We here explored whether training programs specifically targeting one or the other process do improve reading performance in dyslexic children. The dyslexic participants were trained using either the RapDys© program designed to improve phonemic perception or the MAEVA© program targeting visual attention span. Each participant was provided the two programs successively for intensive training. Results show specific effects of RapDys© on phonemic discrimination and pseudo-word reading. MAEVA© specifically improved visual attention span and irregular word reading. Phonemic awareness and regular word reading improved after application of both training programs, suggesting similar positive effects of both methods although effects of concomitant phonic training cannot be ruled out (as there was no control group). The overall findings suggest that both categorical perception and visual attention span remediation contribute to reading.

Formation of readiness of the pedagogue in higher education institution to development of phonemic abilities in preschool children

This article highlights the problems of formation of the state of the audio speech, phonemic skills in preschool children, which include voice hearing, phonemic hearing and phonemic perception; it provides guidance for the development of professional readiness of the pedagogue for professional work. Professional readiness of the pedagogue is seen as an active state of the person providing the preventive setting to work on the formation of phonemic abilities of children of preschool age. The structure and content of the readiness of the pedagogue is a system of four components – motivational, cognitive, personality and activity-centration. Motivation component provides future pedagogues with value orientations, interests, needs, desire to acquire knowledge and skills necessary for the development of phonemic skills in preschoolers.

Polarity Sensitivity in Pediatric and Adult Cochlear Implant Listeners.

Modeling data suggest that sensitivity to the polarity of an electrical stimulus may reflect the integrity of the peripheral processes of the spiral ganglion neurons. Specifically, better sensitivity to anodic (positive) current than to cathodic (negative) current could indicate peripheral process degeneration or demyelination. The goal of this study was to characterize polarity sensitivity in pediatric and adult cochlear implant listeners (41 ears). Relationships between polarity sensitivity at threshold and (a) polarity sensitivity at suprathreshold levels, (b) age-group, (c) preimplantation duration of deafness, and (d) phoneme perception were determined. Polarity sensitivity at threshold was defined as the difference in single-channel behavioral thresholds measured in response to each of two triphasic pulses, where the central high-amplitude phase was either cathodic or anodic. Lower thresholds in response to anodic than to cathodic pulses may suggest peripheral process degeneration. On the majority of electrodes tested, threshold and suprathreshold sensitivity was lower for anodic than for cathodic stimulation; however, dynamic range was often larger for cathodic than for anodic stimulation. Polarity sensitivity did not differ between child- and adult-implanted listeners. Adults with long preimplantation durations of deafness tended to have better sensitivity to anodic pulses on channels that were estimated to interface poorly with the auditory nerve; this was not observed in the child-implanted group. Across subjects, duration of deafness predicted phoneme perception performance. The results of this study suggest that subject- and electrode-dependent differences in polarity sensitivity may assist in developing customized cochlear implant programming interventions for child- and adult-implanted listeners.

Effects of Computer Assisted High Variability Phonetic Training on Perception of Difficult Phonemes for Japanese Learners of English

Effects of Computer Assisted High Variability Phonetic Training on Perception of Difficult Phonemes for Japanese Learners of English

Investigating Native English Speakers’ Perception of Novel Arabic Phonemes after First Exposure

This study reports on an experiment carried out to investigate native English speakers' perception of selected Arabic phonemes after first exposure to a controlled naturalistic input of a weather report. It closely follows Brown's model of L2 speech perception and L1 feature geometry (1998), which seeks to relate theories of segmental phonology to L2 speech perception and the first exposure treatment of Gullberg et al. (2010). Eight Arabic sounds were carefully selected for the experiment: /b/-/d/ which are found in both English and Arabic; /x/-/ɣ/ which are not found in English but are distinguished by features which are distinctive in English [dorsal, voice, continuant], and lastly the contrastive pairs /ʔ/-/ʕ/ and /h/-/ħ/, where the latter phoneme in each pair is alien to the phonemic inventory of English. These pairs are distinguished by the feature [RTR (retracted tongue root)] which is lacking in the feature geometry of English. Participants were divided into an Arabic control group, English+ group with prior exposure to Arabic, and an English group with no prior exposure to Arabic. The results from an AX discrimination task confirmed Brown's hypothesis that L2 perception of non-native contrasts is constrained by the L1 feature geometry.

Diagnosis of the formation of phonemic processes in children with ONR III level by means of computer technologies

The article is devoted to the problems of diagnosing the formation of speech processes in preschoolers. The article deals with the diagnostics of phonemic processes formation in children with general level 3 speech development. A thorough analysis of the works of domestic and foreign scientists on the formation of phonetic processes in children of senior preschool wreath is carried out. The analysis of the system of diagnostics on logopedic classes using computer technologies is given. The modern diagnostics of the state of formation of the phonemic perception processes has been developed and outlined. The state of speech in older preschool children has been studied in stages. Provision of means and methods of diagnostics of the child's speech in preschool educational institutions is analyzed. The problem of computer support on the example of the Logopedic Center "Development" of the city of Nikolaev is outlined. The necessity and importance of timely and qualitative diagnostics of the state of formation of phonemic processes in preschool children with general underdevelopment of the level III speech are substantiated. The main directions of actual improvement of the diagnostic process are identified and outlined. The main trends and directions of the process of diagnostics of the child's speech with the help of innovative computer technologies are separated and outlined. The model of diagnostics of phonemic processes formation is developed and tested, which includes the following criteria: – criterion I – formation of phonetic processes – Indicator 1 – phonemic analysis – Indicator 2 – the formation of phonemic synthesis – Indicator 3 – the formation of phonemic representations – criterion II – stability of attention – Indicator 1 – Stability of attention – Indicator 2 – focus – Indicator 3 – switching attention

A TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACH TO OVERCOME SPECIFIC PHONOLOGICAL ERRORS MADE BY FOREIGN STUDENTS LEARNING BULGARIAN

The purpose of this article is to suggest a technological approach in order to help foreign students learning Bulgarian to overcome specific phonological mistakes at a beginning level.The complex psychological process which takes place during foreign language acquisition is unavoidably accompanied by mother tongue interference. The interference takes place on various levels; however, it is definitely most noticeable with the new phonetic system acquisition. Differentiating phonemes which sound similar is a problematic area in Bulgarian language learning. Foreign students, regardless of their nationality, make specific phonetic-phonological errors, one of which is the so called Epenthesis [i] is being incorrectly inserted in word forms where only [ya] is required.Certain word forms are differentiated in tables, thus helping to understand and rationalize the language regularities which is part of the core language skills for producing oral and written language. Word classes with grammatical forms requiring [-ya], [-iya] are presented in opposing rows. The suggested tables are of great practical value and have been approbated in teaching Bulgarian to foreign students at MU – Plovdiv. They enhance building phonemic perception of individual sound combinations. The work with the students has proved that the suggested technological approach is effective in forming certain practical skills to differentiate the structures in question and to use them appropriately in speaking.Errors ‘anticipatory‘diagnosis enhances their assessment and defines the choice of a relevant technique in order to rectify them. A system of purposeful exercises has been developed to achieve good phonemic awareness, defined concept of sound-letter correspondence, knowledge of segmental and super segmental units of speech flow and good pronunciation. This approach activates students’ motivation in acquiring Bulgarian phonetics and phonology and implementing new general and medical vocabulary.The technological approach suggested in the article is part of the teaching activities, designed to help learners master new knowledge and skills to use Bulgarian both in casual and academic environment. The main purpose of this technique and the observations from teaching practice is to share our professional experience and ideas so that the process of teaching Bulgarian as a foreign language could be optimizes.

Effect of blindness on mismatch responses to Mandarin lexical tones, consonants, and vowels

According to the hypothesis of auditory compensation, blind listeners are more sensitive to auditory input than sighted listeners. In the current study, we employed the passive oddball paradigm to investigate the effect of blindness on listeners’ mismatch responses to Mandarin lexical tones, consonants, and vowels. Twelve blind and twelve sighted age- and verbal IQ-matched adults with normal hearing participated in this study. Our results indicated that blind listeners possibly had a more efficient pre-attentive processing (shorter MMN peak latency) of lexical tones in the tone-dominant hemisphere (i.e., the right hemisphere); and that they exhibited greater sensitivity (larger MMN amplitude) when processing phonemes (consonants and/or vowels) at the pre-attentive stage in both hemispheres compared with sighted individuals. However, we observed longer MMN and P3a peak latencies during phoneme processing in the blind versus control participants, indicating that blind listeners may be slower in terms of pre-attentive processing and involuntary attention switching when processing phonemes. This could be due to a lack of visual experience in the production and perception of phonemes. In a word, the current study revealed a two-sided influence of blindness on Mandarin speech perception.

The development of children’s eye gaze pattern during multisensory emotion and phoneme perception

The development of children’s eye gaze pattern during multisensory emotion and phoneme perception

Short-term, not long-term, average spectra of preceding sentences bias consonant categorization

Phoneme perception is influenced by spectral properties of surrounding sounds. For example, listeners perceive /g/ (lower F3 onset) more often after sentences filtered to emphasize high-F3 frequencies, and perceive /d/ (higher F3 onset) more often after sentences filtered to emphasize low-F3 frequencies. These biases are known as spectral contrast effects (SCEs). Much of this work examined differences between long-term average spectra (LTAS) of preceding sounds and target phonemes. Stilp and Assgari (2018 ASA) revealed that spectra of the last 500 ms of precursor sentences, not the entire LTAS, predicted biases in consonant categorization. Here, the influences of Early (before the last 500 ms) versus Late (last 500 ms) portions of precursor sentences on subsequent consonant categorization were compared. Sentences emphasized different frequency regions in each temporal window (Early = low-F3 emphasis, Late = high-F3 emphasis, and vice versa) naturally or via filtering. Entire-sentence LTASes predicted that SCEs would not bias consonant categorization, but instead responses were biased by the spectrum of the Late window. This was replicated when the Early window did not emphasize either frequency region but the Late window did. Results endorse closer consideration of patterns of spectral energy over time in preceding sounds, not just their LTAS.

The determining factor of L2 vowel perception: The establishment of L2 categories

The L2 speech learning theories argue that the perception of L2 phonemes is mainly influenced by the relationship between and among L1 and L2 phonemes. In the present study, we hypothesized that L2 vowel identification is primarily determined by the solidity of the L2 vowel category establishment and the perceptual distance between L2 vowel categories. A group of 31 native Mandarin Chinese-speaking listeners and a control group of 9 native English-speaking listeners participated in the study. All listeners were asked to identify natural English/Chinese vowel identification and categorize and rate synthetic English/Chinese vowels. Major findings include: 1) Chinese learners’ English vowel perception was associated with their capacity to establish English vowel category; 2) the perceptual distance between English vowel contrasts played a key role in Chinese learners’ English vowel perception, rather than the distance between the Chinese vowel and English counterpart. Overall, results of this study suggest that the individual variability of Chinese-native listeners’ English vowel perception is interpreted by the establishment of English vowel categories. [Work supported by China Natural Science Foundation 31628009.]

Testing symmetry of temporal window of integration between vibrotactile and auditory speech information in voiced phoneme perception

The temporal window for enhancement in cross-modal integration is asymmetrical, and does not require synchrony of stimuli for integration; this temporal offset has been linked to differences in relative signal speed as can be seen in audio-visual integration [Munhall et al. 1996. Perc. Psychophys. 58: 351] and audio-aerotactile integration [Gick et al. 2010. Journ. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128: EL342] of speech. However, as vibrotactile cues normally accompany acoustic cues, no difference in signal speed—and no concomitant perceptual asymmetry—is experienced between these two modalities. Contrary to previous research, we predict a symmetrical window for integration. A portable voice-coil transducer is used to produce vibrotactile stimuli, similar to the laryngeal vibrations normally felt in voiced speech. Results of an experiment will be presented in which participants are asked to discriminate between minimal pairs in noise with the device between their thumb and index finger, and in which audio and vibrotactile stimuli are presented in different orders and at different temporal offsets. Implications will be discussed for theories of cross-modal integration. [Funding from NSERC.]