Phoneme Perception Research Articles

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.]

Enhanced neural and behavioural processing of a nonnative phonemic contrast in professional musicians.

Based on growing evidence suggesting that professional music training facilitates foreign language perception and learning, we examined the impact of musical expertise on the categorisation of syllables including phonemes that did (/p/, /b/) or did not (/ph /) belong to the French repertoire by analysing both behaviour (error rates and reaction times) and Event-Related brain Potentials (N200 and P300 components). Professional musicians and nonmusicians categorised syllables either as /ba/ or /pa/ (voicing task), or as /pa/ or /ph a/ with /ph / being a nonnative phoneme for French speakers (aspiration task). In line with our hypotheses, results showed that musicians outperformed nonmusicians in the aspiration task but not in the voicing task. Moreover, the difference between the native (/p/) and the nonnative phoneme (/ph /), as reflected in N200 and P300 amplitudes, was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians in the aspiration task but not in the voicing task. These results show that behaviour and brain activity associated to nonnative phoneme perception are influenced by musical expertise and that these effects are task-dependent. The implications of these findings for current models of phoneme perception and for understanding the qualitative and quantitative differences found on the N200 and P300 components are discussed.

Acoustic Analysis of Intensive Language Exposure on Second Language Learners’ Cognitive Perception Pattern of American English Phonemes

This paper attempts to quantify the perception of tense vowel /i/ and lax vowel /I/ in American English by native speakers and Chinese learners and testify if Chinese learners also rely more on acoustic features than duration to differentiate the minimal pair /i/-/I/ in the phonetic system of American English. Based on the related phonetic studies in second language learners (SLLs), the perceptual assimilation model (PAM) and the speech learning model (SLM) were adopted to discuss the effect of intensive language exposures on the perception of English phonemes among Chinese learners. To quantify the effects of the ILE on the perception pattern of the SLLs, two English phonetic continuums were constructed for a tense-lax vowel contrast /i/ and /I/. Then, three groups of subjects, involving 60 English major students and 10 native speakers, received two identification tests and one discrimination test. The test results reveal that the native speakers and the SLLs relied on different acoustic cues to distinguish between /i/ and /I/. The former mainly depended on formant distribution, while the latter on duration. Besides, it is also concluded that the ILE enabled the SLLs to develop a similar perception pattern to that of the native speakers. The research sheds new light on the acquisition of second language among Chinese learners.

Vowel and tone recognition in quiet and in noise among Mandarin-speaking amusics

Music and language are two intricately linked communication modalities in humans. A deficit in music pitch processing as manifested in the condition of congenital amusia has been related to difficulties in lexical tone processing for both tone and non-tonal languages. However, it is still unclear whether amusia also affects the perception of vowel phonemes in quiet and in noise. In this study, we examined vowel-plus-tone identification in quiet and noise conditions among Mandarin-speaking amusics with and without speech tone difficulties (tone agnosics and pure amusics, respectively), and IQ- and age-matched controls. Overall, pure amusics showed vowel and tone identification comparable to the controls in both quiet and noise conditions. Compared to pure amusics and controls, tone agnosics showed deficits in tone perception in both quiet and noise conditions. More importantly, their vowel perception was lower than pure amusics and controls in noise conditions, e.g., at a signal-to-noise ratio of −4 dB, although they showed normal-like performance in quiet and at a signal-to-noise ratio of −8 dB. These results suggest that when amusia affected speech tone processing (e.g., tone agnosics), it could also compromise vowel processing in noise. However, amusia alone does not affect tone or vowel perception in Mandarin Chinese either in quiet or in noise. Overall, the current study highlights the necessity of taking heterogeneity within the amusic group into account when considering the related speech deficits in this group.

Speech understanding in noise in elderly adults: the effect of inhibitory control and syntactic complexity.

Previous research has suggested that speech perception in elderly adults is influenced not only by age-related hearing loss or presbycusis but also by declines in cognitive abilities, by background noise and by the syntactic complexity of the message. To gain further insight into the influence of these cognitive as well as acoustic and linguistic factors on speech perception in elderly adults by investigating inhibitory control as a listener characteristic and background noise type and syntactic complexity as input characteristics. Phoneme identification was measured in different noise conditions and in different linguistic contexts (single words, sentences with varying syntactic complexity). Additionally, inhibitory control was measured using a visual stimulus-response matching task. Fifty-one adults participated in this study, including elderly adults with age-related hearing loss (n = 9) and with normal hearing (n = 17), and a control group of normal hearing younger adults (n = 25). The analysis revealed that elderly adults with normal hearing and with hearing loss were less likely to identify successfully phonemes in single words than younger normal hearing controls. In the context of sentences, only elderly adults with hearing loss had a lower odds of correct phoneme perception than the control group. Additionally, in elderly adults with hearing loss, phoneme-in-sentence perception was linked to age-related declines in inhibitory control. In all participants, phoneme identification in sentences was influenced by both noise type and syntactic complexity. Inhibitory control and syntactic complexity might play a significant role in speech perception, especially in elderly listeners. These factors might also influence the results of clinical assessments of speech perception. Testing procedures thus need to be selected and their results interpreted carefully with these influences in mind.

The Relationship between Phoneme Production and Perception in Speech-Impaired and Typically-Developing Children

One of the central questions that Eric Lenneberg raised in his seminal book, Biological Foundations of Language is: What is the relationship between language comprehension and language production? This paper reviews Lenneberg’s case study of a child with congenital anarthria and then presents the results of two studies that investigate the relationship between phoneme perception and production. The first study investigates the phoneme identification skills of a child with developmental apraxia who, like the anarthric child studied by Lenneberg, had essentially no speech yet had no difficulty understanding speech. The second study investigates the extent to which 28 typically-developing children’s ability to identify phonemes is related to their ability to produce phonemes. The results of both studies support Lenneberg’s conclusion that children’s ability to perceive speech is not dependent on their ability to produce speech. Thus, Lenneberg’s original case study and the two studies presented in this paper argue against gestural theories of speech perception such as the Motor Theory.

The electrophysiological correlates of sublexical speech perception: A combined electrophysiological/cognitive neuropsychology approach

The electrophysiological correlates of sublexical speech perception: A combined electrophysiological/cognitive neuropsychology approach

The Effect of Adaptive Nonlinear Frequency Compression on Phoneme Perception.

This study implemented a fitting method, developed for use with frequency lowering hearing aids, across multiple testing sites, participants, and hearing aid conditions to evaluate speech perception with a novel type of frequency lowering. A total of 8 participants, including children and young adults, participated in real-world hearing aid trials. A blinded crossover design, including posttrial withdrawal testing, was used to assess aided phoneme perception. The hearing aid conditions included adaptive nonlinear frequency compression (NFC), static NFC, and conventional processing. Enabling either adaptive NFC or static NFC improved group-level detection and recognition results for some high-frequency phonemes, when compared with conventional processing. Mean results for the distinction component of the Phoneme Perception Test (Schmitt, Winkler, Boretzki, & Holube, 2016) were similar to those obtained with conventional processing. Findings suggest that both types of NFC tested in this study provided a similar amount of speech perception benefit, when compared with group-level performance with conventional hearing aid technology. Individual-level results are presented with discussion around patterns of results that differ from the group average.

The speech perception skills of children with and without speech sound disorder

PurposeTo investigate whether Australian-English speaking children with and without speech sound disorder (SSD) differ in their overall speech perception accuracy. Additionally, to investigate differences in the perception of specific phonemes and the association between speech perception and speech production skills. MethodTwenty-five Australian-English speaking children aged 48–60 months participated in this study. The SSD group included 12 children and the typically developing (TD) group included 13 children. Children completed routine speech and language assessments in addition to an experimental Australian-English lexical and phonetic judgement task based on Rvachew’s Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System (SAILS) program (Rvachew, 2009). This task included eight words across four word-initial phonemes—/k, ɹ, ʃ, s/. ResultsChildren with SSD showed significantly poorer perceptual accuracy on the lexical and phonetic judgement task compared with TD peers. The phonemes /ɹ/ and /s/ were most frequently perceived in error across both groups. Additionally, the phoneme /ɹ/ was most commonly produced in error. There was also a positive correlation between overall speech perception and speech production scores. ConclusionsChildren with SSD perceived speech less accurately than their typically developing peers. The findings suggest that an Australian-English variation of a lexical and phonetic judgement task similar to the SAILS program is promising and worthy of a larger scale study.

Perceptual Information Loss due to Impaired Speech Production

Phonological classes define articulatory-free and articulatory-bound phone attributes. Deep neural network is used to estimate the probability of phonological classes from the speech signal. In theory, a unique combination of phone attributes form a phoneme identity. Probabilistic inference of phonological classes thus enables estimation of their compositional phoneme probabilities. A novel information theoretic framework is devised to quantify the information conveyed by each phone attribute, and assess the speech production quality for perception of phonemes. As a use case, we hypothesize that disruption in speech production leads to information loss in phone attributes, and thus confusion in phoneme identification. We quantify the amount of information loss due to dysarthric articulation recorded in the TORGO database. A novel information measure is formulated to evaluate the deviation from an ideal phone attribute production leading us to distinguish healthy production from pathological speech.

Segmental and Suprasegmental Perception in Children Using Hearing Aids.

Suprasegmental perception (perception of stress, intonation, "how something is said" and "who says it") and segmental speech perception (perception of individual phonemes or perception of "what is said") are perceptual abilities that provide the foundation for the development of spoken language and effective communication. While there are numerous studies examining segmental perception in children with hearing aids (HAs), there are far fewer studies examining suprasegmental perception, especially for children with greater degrees of residual hearing. Examining the relation between acoustic hearing thresholds, and both segmental and suprasegmental perception for children with HAs, may ultimately enable better device recommendations (bilateral HAs, bimodal devices [one CI and one HA in opposite ears], bilateral CIs) for a particular degree of residual hearing. Examining both types of speech perception is important because segmental and suprasegmental cues are affected differentially by the type of hearing device(s) used (i.e., cochlear implant [CI] and/or HA). Additionally, suprathreshold measures, such as frequency resolution ability, may partially predict benefit from amplification and may assist audiologists in making hearing device recommendations. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between audibility (via hearing thresholds and speech intelligibility indices), and segmental and suprasegmental speech perception for children with HAs. A secondary goal is to explore the relationships among frequency resolution ability (via spectral modulation detection [SMD] measures), segmental and suprasegmental speech perception, and receptive language in these same children. A prospective cross-sectional design. Twenty-three children, ages 4 yr 11 mo to 11 yr 11 mo, participated in the study. Participants were recruited from pediatric clinic populations, oral schools for the deaf, and mainstream schools. Audiological history and hearing device information were collected from participants and their families. Segmental and suprasegmental speech perception, SMD, and receptive vocabulary skills were assessed. Correlations were calculated to examine the significance (p < 0.05) of relations between audibility and outcome measures. Measures of audibility and segmental speech perception are not significantly correlated, while low-frequency pure-tone average (unaided) is significantly correlated with suprasegmental speech perception. SMD is significantly correlated with all measures (measures of audibility, segmental and suprasegmental perception and vocabulary). Lastly, although age is not significantly correlated with measures of audibility, it is significantly correlated with all other outcome measures. The absence of a significant correlation between audibility and segmental speech perception might be attributed to overall audibility being maximized through well-fit HAs. The significant correlation between low-frequency unaided audibility and suprasegmental measures is likely due to the strong, predominantly low-frequency nature of suprasegmental acoustic properties. Frequency resolution ability, via SMD performance, is significantly correlated with all outcomes and requires further investigation; its significant correlation with vocabulary suggests that linguistic ability may be partially related to frequency resolution ability. Last, all of the outcome measures are significantly correlated with age, suggestive of developmental effects.

Effects of nonlinear frequency compression on Mandarin speech recognition and sound quality perception in hearing-aid users

The aim of the present study is to evaluate the effects of nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC) on Mandarin speech recognition and sound quality perception. Thirty Chinese-speaking, hearing-impaired adults without hearing-aid experiences participated in the study. They were fitted bilaterally with the Phonak behind-the-ear hearing aids. Each participant was evaluated with the Phoneme Perception Test, Mandarin speech recognition, and sound quality perception at post-fitting 0, 4, and 12 weeks with NLFC-on vs. NLFC-off. The NLFC were active at home. Results show significant differences in detection of phonemes of high-frequency components (such as /sa/) between NLFC on and off. The difference between NLFC on and off was significant for consonant and sentence recognition. Duration of NLFC use had significant effects on the recognition of consonants, vowels, and sentences. Regarding the sound quality perception test, there were significant effects of NLFC conditions (on vs. off), duration of NLFC use, and sound types on the four categories of percepts (i.e., loudness, clarity, naturalness, and overall preference). Therefore, NLFC improves the audibility of high-frequency speech signals and provides better recognition of consonants and sentences and perception of sound quality. The benefit of NLFC on speech recognition and sound quality perception requires certain amount of acclimatization.

Multisensory Integration in Cochlear Implant Recipients.

Speech perception is inherently a multisensory process involving integration of auditory and visual cues. Multisensory integration in cochlear implant (CI) recipients is a unique circumstance in that the integration occurs after auditory deprivation and the provision of hearing via the CI. Despite the clear importance of multisensory cues for perception, in general, and for speech intelligibility, specifically, the topic of multisensory perceptual benefits in CI users has only recently begun to emerge as an area of inquiry. We review the research that has been conducted on multisensory integration in CI users to date and suggest a number of areas needing further research. The overall pattern of results indicates that many CI recipients show at least some perceptual gain that can be attributable to multisensory integration. The extent of this gain, however, varies based on a number of factors, including age of implantation and specific task being assessed (e.g., stimulus detection, phoneme perception, word recognition). Although both children and adults with CIs obtain audiovisual benefits for phoneme, word, and sentence stimuli, neither group shows demonstrable gain for suprasegmental feature perception. Additionally, only early-implanted children and the highest performing adults obtain audiovisual integration benefits similar to individuals with normal hearing. Increasing age of implantation in children is associated with poorer gains resultant from audiovisual integration, suggesting a sensitive period in development for the brain networks that subserve these integrative functions, as well as length of auditory experience. This finding highlights the need for early detection of and intervention for hearing loss, not only in terms of auditory perception, but also in terms of the behavioral and perceptual benefits of audiovisual processing. Importantly, patterns of auditory, visual, and audiovisual responses suggest that underlying integrative processes may be fundamentally different between CI users and typical-hearing listeners. Future research, particularly in low-level processing tasks such as signal detection will help to further assess mechanisms of multisensory integration for individuals with hearing loss, both with and without CIs.

Preliminary evaluation of a novel non-linear frequency compression scheme for use in children

Objective: The primary goal of this study was to evaluate a new form of non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) in children. The new NLFC processing scheme is adaptive and potentially allows for a better preservation of the spectral characteristics of the input sounds when compared to conventional NLFC processing. Design: A repeated-measures design was utilised to compare the speech perception of the participants with two configurations of the new adaptive NLFC processing to their performance with the existing NLFC. The outcome measures included the University of Western Ontario Plurals test, the Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant word recognition test, and the Phonak Phoneme Perception test. Study sample: Study participants included 14 children, aged 6–17 years, with mild-to-severe low-frequency hearing loss and severe-to-profound high-frequency hearing loss. Results: The results indicated that the use of the new adaptive NLFC processing resulted in significantly better average word recognition and plural detection relative to the conventional NLFC processing.Conclusion: Overall, the adaptive NLFC processing evaluated in this study has the potential to significantly improve speech perception relative to conventional NLFC processing.

Predictions of Speech Chimaera Intelligibility Using Auditory Nerve Mean-Rate and Spike-Timing Neural Cues.

Perceptual studies of speech intelligibility have shown that slow variations of acoustic envelope (ENV) in a small set of frequency bands provides adequate information for good perceptual performance in quiet, whereas acoustic temporal fine-structure (TFS) cues play a supporting role in background noise. However, the implications for neural coding are prone to misinterpretation because the mean-rate neural representation can contain recovered ENV cues from cochlear filtering of TFS. We investigated ENV recovery and spike-time TFS coding using objective measures of simulated mean-rate and spike-timing neural representations of chimaeric speech, in which either the ENV or the TFS is replaced by another signal. We (a) evaluated the levels of mean-rate and spike-timing neural information for two categories of chimaeric speech, one retaining ENV cues and the other TFS; (b) examined the level of recovered ENV from cochlear filtering of TFS speech; (c) examined and quantified the contribution to recovered ENV from spike-timing cues using a lateral inhibition network (LIN); and (d) constructed linear regression models with objective measures of mean-rate and spike-timing neural cues and subjective phoneme perception scores from normal-hearing listeners. The mean-rate neural cues from the original ENV and recovered ENV partially accounted for perceptual score variability, with additional variability explained by the recovered ENV from the LIN-processed TFS speech. The best model predictions of chimaeric speech intelligibility were found when both the mean-rate and spike-timing neural cues were included, providing further evidence that spike-time coding of TFS cues is important for intelligibility when the speech envelope is degraded.

The Downside of Greater Lexical Influences: Selectively Poorer Speech Perception in Noise.

Although lexical information influences phoneme perception, the extent to which reliance on lexical information enhances speech processing in challenging listening environments is unclear. We examined the extent to which individual differences in lexical influences on phonemic processing impact speech processing in maskers containing varying degrees of linguistic information (2-talker babble or pink noise). Twenty-nine monolingual English speakers were instructed to ignore the lexical status of spoken syllables (e.g., gift vs. kift) and to only categorize the initial phonemes (/g/ vs. /k/). The same participants then performed speech recognition tasks in the presence of 2-talker babble or pink noise in audio-only and audiovisual conditions. Individuals who demonstrated greater lexical influences on phonemic processing experienced greater speech processing difficulties in 2-talker babble than in pink noise. These selective difficulties were present across audio-only and audiovisual conditions. Individuals with greater reliance on lexical processes during speech perception exhibit impaired speech recognition in listening conditions in which competing talkers introduce audible linguistic interferences. Future studies should examine the locus of lexical influences/interferences on phonemic processing and speech-in-speech processing.

Transferencia negativa del español al inglés en las vocales /ʌ/ y /æ/

The aim of this non-experimental descriptive study is to establish if linguistic negative transfer caused by the aural perception of Spanish vowel phonemes is responsible for spelling mistakes found in 5th graders’ written texts from a Spanish-English bilingual school in Concepcion, Chile. The subjects of this study participated in an aural perception test in which they had to represent the English vowels /ʌ/ and /ae/ —these vowels were presented in twelve pseudo words. The results are consistent with the literature on the subject of phonetic- phonological negative transfer, suggesting the influence of Spanish phonics on the auditory vowel perception in English, both for pseudo words within a semantic context and in isolation.

Role of carrier signal types in perception of Thai phonemes: Implications for cochlear implant recipients

It is well known that segmental (consonants and vowels) and suprasegmental (e.g., tone and stress) speech sounds provide intrinsically different kinds of perceptual information. These differences suggest that phoneme perception might be improved in cochlear implant strategy by employing a carrier signal that is most compatible to each type of speech sounds. However, all speech vocoder strategies for cochlear implant (CI) available in most of works use one carrier signal due to their simplicity to implement. In this paper, we investigated the role of five different carrier signals for Thai speech perception on different types of phonemes, i.e., sine-carrier with/without band-pass filter (TF/TNF), noise-carrier with/without band-pass filter (NF/NNF), and temporal fine structure carrier (TFS). Each type of carrier signal was used to synthesize speech stimuli using the continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy as basic and commonly used for CI. Four different psychoacoustic tests for initials, finals, vowels were performed on 20 Thai normal hearing (NH) listeners, while 13 NH listeners were used for lexical tones. Experimental results showed that sine-carriers provided the highest intelligibility scores for initials, finals, and vowels, while NNF provided the highest intelligibility scores for lexical tones. The results suggested that the way to provide an optimal speech perception for tonal language is to use two parallel carriers in speech vocoder strategy for CI.

The relationship between maternal education and the neural substrates of phoneme perception in children: Interactions between socioeconomic status and proficiency level

Relationships between maternal education (ME) and both behavioral performances and brain activation during the discrimination of phonemic and nonphonemic sounds were examined using fMRI in children with different levels of phoneme categorization proficiency (CP). Significant relationships were found between ME and intellectual functioning and vocabulary, with a trend for phonological awareness. A significant interaction between CP and ME was seen for nonverbal reasoning abilities. In addition, fMRI analyses revealed a significant interaction between CP and ME for phonemic discrimination in left prefrontal cortex. Thus, ME was associated with differential patterns of both neuropsychological performance and brain activation contingent on the level of CP. These results highlight the importance of examining SES effects at different proficiency levels. The pattern of results may suggest the presence of neurobiological differences in the children with low CP that affect the nature of relationships with ME.

Experience of applying phoneme perception test to the process of hearing aid selection and fitting

Aim. To study the effectiveness of phoneme perception test for evaluation of different hearing aids’ types performance &#x0D; Methods. Hearing aid was provided to 100 patients aged 45-59 years with bilateral chronic sensorineural moderate and moderate-to-severe hearing loss. 4 equal groups were formed depending on the type of a hearing aid - behind-the-ear with standard (BTE) and slim (BTEslim) tubes, receiver-in-the-canal (RIC), and completely-in-the-canal (CIC). All devices had comparable characteristics and were fitted monaurally. The efficacy was evaluated by phoneme perceprion test, which was performed before and 12 weeks after the correction (with and without the hearing aid). &#x0D; Results. The detection test before correction revealed 38 deviations from the expected numbers, after 3-month adaptation - 28 without the device and 23 with it reflecting the significant dynamics compared to baseline parameters in CIC group (p