Speech Sounds Research Articles

Resolving competing predictions in speech: How qualitatively different cues and cue reliability contribute to phoneme identification.

Listeners have many sources of information available in interpreting speech. Numerous theoretical frameworks and paradigms have established that various constraints impact the processing of speech sounds, but it remains unclear how listeners might simultaneously consider multiple cues, especially those that differ qualitatively (i.e., with respect to timing and/or modality) or quantitatively (i.e., with respect to cue reliability). Here, we establish that cross-modal identity priming can influence the interpretation of ambiguous phonemes (Exp. 1, N = 40) and show that two qualitatively distinct cues - namely, cross-modal identity priming and auditory co-articulatory context - have additive effects on phoneme identification (Exp. 2, N = 40). However, we find no effect of quantitative variation in a cue - specifically, changes in the reliability of the priming cue did not influence phoneme identification (Exp. 3a, N = 40; Exp. 3b, N = 40). Overall, we find that qualitatively distinct cues can additively influence phoneme identification. While many existing theoretical frameworks address constraint integration to some degree, our results provide a step towards understanding how information that differs in both timing and modality is integrated in online speech perception.

Cochlear Implant Users Experience the Sound-To-Music Effect

ABSTRACT The speech-to-song illusion is a robust effect where repeated speech induces the perception of singing; this effect has been extended to repeated excerpts of environmental sounds (sound-to-music effect). Here, we asked whether repetition could elicit musical percepts in cochlear implant (CI) users, who experience challenges with perceiving music due to both physiological and device limitations. Thirty adult CI users and thirty age-matched controls with normal hearing (NH) completed two repetition experiments for speech and nonspeech sounds (water droplets). We hypothesized that CI users would experience the sound-to-music effect from temporal/rhythmic cues alone, but to a lesser magnitude compared to NH controls, given the limited access to spectral information CI users receive from their implants. We found that CI users did experience the sound-to-music effect but to a lesser degree compared to NH participants. Musicality ratings were not associated with musical training or frequency resolution, and among CI users, clinical variables like duration of hearing loss also did not influence ratings. Cochlear implants provide a strong clinical model for disentangling the effects of spectral and temporal information in an acoustic signal; our results suggest that temporal cues are sufficient to perceive the sound-to-music effect when spectral resolution is limited. Additionally, incorporating short repetitions into music specially designed for CI users may provide a promising way for them to experience music.

Emotion Detection via Voice and Speech Recognition

In human-computer interaction, spoken emotion detection is essential yet difficult. Researchers extract emotional information from speech sounds using a variety of analytic techniques. Effective communication requires an understanding of human emotions, which range from happiness to astonishment and beyond. Classification, pre-processing, feature extraction, and pattern recognition are all involved in emotion recognition. While some approaches take into account a continuous spectrum, others concentrate on a single-dimensional representation. The study of emotional cognition benefits from the use of technologies such as fMRI, which facilitate the distinction between positive and negative emotions. The intricacy and significance of identifying emotions in speech are emphasised in this abstract, underscoring the necessity of sophisticated methodologies in the field of human-computer interaction research

Investigating the Performance of Gammatone Filters and Their Applicability to Design Cochlear Implant Processing System

Commercially available cochlear implants are designed to aid profoundly deaf people in understanding speech and environmental sounds. A typical cochlear implant uses a bank of bandpass filters to decompose an audio signal into a set of dynamic signals. These filters’ critical center frequencies f0 imitate the human cochlea’s vibration patterns caused by audio signals. Gammatone filters (GTFs), with two unique characteristics: (a) an appropriate “pseudo resonant” frequency transfer function, mimicking the human cochlea, and (b) realizing efficient hardware implementation, could demonstrate them as unique candidates for cochlear implant design. Although GTFs have recently attracted considerable attention from researchers, a comprehensive exposition of GTFs is still absent in the literature. This paper starts by enumerating the impulse response of GTFs. Then, the magnitude spectrum, |H(f)|, and bandwidth, more specifically, the equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB) of GTFs, are derived. The simulation results suggested that optimally chosen filter parameters, e.g., critical center frequencies,f0; temporal decay parameter, b; and order of the filter, n, can minimize the interference of the filter bank frequencies and very likely model the filter bandwidth (ERB), independent of f0b. Finally, these optimized filters are applied to delineate a filter bank for a cochlear implant design based on the Clarion processor model.

The Role of EGG in Identifying Prevocalic Glottal Stop

ObjectiveThe aim of the study is to investigate the use of incidences and characteristics of Prevocalic Electroglottographic Signal (PVES) derived from electroglottography (EGG) in characterizing glottal stops in cleft palate speech. MethodsMandarin non-aspirated monosyllabic first tone words were used for the speech sampling procedure. A total of 1680 utterances (from 83 patients with repaired cleft palates) were divided into three categories based on the results of auditory-perceptual evaluation of recorded speech sounds by three independent reviewers: [Category A (absence of glottal stop agreed by all 3 reviewers) (n = 1192 tokens), Category B (two out of three reviewers agreed on the presence of a glottal stop) (n = 181 tokens) and Category C (all 3 reviewers agreed on the presence of a glottal stop) (n = 307 tokens)]. The EGG signals of the 1680 utterances were analyzed using a MATLAB program to automatically mark the instances of PVES (amplitude & time-interval) in the GS utterances. ResultsThe result showed that the incidence of EGG PVES presented good positive correlation with auditory-perceptual evaluation (r=0.703, p＜0.000). Statistical analysis revealed a significant difference in mean PVES amplitude among different groups (p＜0.05). There was a significant distinction in the time-interval between groups A and B, as well as in groups A and C (p＜0.05). ConclusionsThe study suggests PVES can be an objective means of identifying glottal stops in cleft palate speech. It also indicates that proportion of amplitude and time interval of PVES tend to be positively correlate with subjective assessment.

Singing in a Second Language: Pronunciation Errors Made by Sri Lankan Decedent Students' when Singing Sinhala Songs Under the Influence of the Australian English Language

When a speaker/vocal performer sings in a second language, the pronunciation can be labelled as a different or fake accent compared to the native speakers. On a theoretical level, it is very difficult for learners of a second language (L2) to get rid of the phonetic effects of (L1) and sometimes impossible, unless the language learner can process both languages from birth. This research aims to identify the pronunciation errors made by Sri Lankan decedent students' according to the consonant sounds of the Inattentional Phonetic Alphabet when they sing Sinhala songs under the influence of the Australian English Language. This research specifically questions what consonant substitutes are employed by the aforementioned speakers for the irreplaceable consonant identity of Sinhala sound production. In this research, Sinhala and English phonemes were compared based on the data from Cox & Palethrope (2007), Rajapakshe (1994 & 1997) and previous research of this researcher (Penahetipola, 2011). The research fundamentally employs a comparison of the phonetic inventory of both languages based on the IPA charts and data from spectrogram analysis of speech sounds made by 45 Australian-born children of Sinhala migrants who are 10-12 and study Sinhala as a second language. Prenasalised stops and nasals have been identified as the most noticeable substitutes. Also, retroflex, palatal, and bilabial are the concerned sound production. The finding is very useful in developing language-speaking programs for speakers and vocal performers who practice Sinhala as their second language.

Cajun French phonologies in Louisiana today

The speech sounds of endangered Cajun French (CF), as it survives in Louisiana today, are investigated in the present study. Sixteen fluent CF Heritage Language speakers (seven males, nine females), of an average age of 77 years, who live in Lafayette parish, Louisiana, picture-named 50 words of varying CF-representative phonotactics. On average, 34 words were produced similarly by 67% of participants and 16 words were produced similarly by 29% of participants. Variation mainly targets vowels, glides, affricates, and the rhotic, with prevalent processes occurring in stressed closed syllables. Results profile phonemic and phonetic inventories documenting CF phonologies today, also highlighting differences from earlier reports.

My Perspective: Auditory Evoked Potentials Using Speech

Purpose: The purpose of this tutorial is to clarify the use of speech sounds as stimuli for auditory evoked potentials and how these might contribute to our understanding of speech, language, learning, and hearing disorders. Speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs), auditory steady-state responses, auditory middle latency responses, mismatch negativity, P300, cortical onset responses, and the acoustic change complex are reviewed. Method: The author drew upon her scholarship in this area from over 4 decades of research and teaching to summarize the major findings when using speech stimuli to evoke auditory potentials that have been used in clinical contexts. Results: Speech-evoked auditory potentials contribute to our understanding of how the brain processes the acoustic features of speech sounds, providing information that is complementary to psychophysical tests. When psychophysical tests cannot be performed owing to neurodevelopmental immaturity or disability, or cognitive disability, speech-evoked auditory potentials may be used to estimate the benefit of amplification or implantation for speech, language, and hearing. Conclusions: The benefit of using auditory evoked potentials for evaluation is that they provide insight into the brain mechanisms underlying hearing and listening disorders that audiologists aim to treat. While we can use the known correlations between perceptual and electrophysiological responses for “cross-checking” our evaluation results, examining when discrepancies occur is also especially meaningful. For example, the complex ABR reveals subcortical issues in temporal processing that would not be evident in ABRs to clicks or tone bursts, nor in behavioral testing. P300 can document slower neural processing of speech stimuli that may be relevant to the rehabilitation of older adults, even when word recognition scores appear to be congruent with the pure-tone audiogram. In these ways, auditory evoked potentials for speech provide audiologists with tools for demonstrating to clients how their brain responds to speech and opening the conversation for rehabilitation.

An auditory perspective on phonological development in infancy.

The auditory system encodes the phonetic features of languages by processing spectro-temporal modulations in speech, which can be described at two time scales: relatively slow amplitude variations over time (AM, further distinguished into the slowest <8-16 Hz and faster components 16-500 Hz), and frequency modulations (FM, oscillating at higher rates about 600-10 kHz). While adults require only the slowest AM cues to identify and discriminate speech sounds, infants have been shown to also require faster AM cues (>8-16 Hz) for similar tasks. Using an observer-based psychophysical method, this study measured the ability of typical-hearing 6-month-olds, 10-month-olds, and adults to detect a change in the vowel or consonant features of consonant-vowel syllables when temporal modulations are selectively degraded. Two acoustically degraded conditions were designed, replacing FM cues with pure tones in 32 frequency bands, and then extracting AM cues in each frequency band with two different low-pass cut- off frequencies: (1) half the bandwidth (Fast AM condition), (2) <8 Hz (Slow AM condition). In the Fast AM condition, results show that with reduced FM cues, 85% of 6-month-olds, 72.5% of 10-month-olds, and 100% of adults successfully categorize phonemes. Among participants who passed the Fast AM condition, 67% of 6-month-olds, 75% of 10-month-olds, and 95% of adults passed the Slow AM condition. Furthermore, across the three age groups, the proportion of participants able to detect phonetic category change did not differ between the vowel and consonant conditions. However, age-related differences were observed for vowel categorization: while the 6- and 10-month-old groups did not differ from one another, they both independently differed from adults. Moreover, for consonant categorization, 10-month-olds were more impacted by acoustic temporal degradation compared to 6-month-olds, and showed a greater decline in detection success rates between the Fast AM and Slow AM conditions. The degradation of FM and faster AM cues (>8 Hz) appears to strongly affect consonant processing at 10 months of age. These findings suggest that between 6 and 10 months, infants show different developmental trajectories in the perceptual weight of speech temporal acoustic cues for vowel and consonant processing, possibly linked to phonological attunement.

Effects of Stimulus Rate and Periodicity on Auditory Cortical Entrainment to Continuous Sounds.

The neural mechanisms underlying the exogenous coding and neural entrainment to repetitive auditory stimuli have seen a recent surge of interest. However, few studies have characterized how parametric changes in stimulus presentation alter entrained responses. We examined the degree to which the brain entrains to repeated speech (i.e., /ba/) and nonspeech (i.e., click) sounds using phase-locking value (PLV) analysis applied to multichannel human electroencephalogram (EEG) data. Passive cortico-acoustic tracking was investigated in N = 24 normal young adults utilizing EEG source analyses that isolated neural activity stemming from both auditory temporal cortices. We parametrically manipulated the rate and periodicity of repetitive, continuous speech and click stimuli to investigate how speed and jitter in ongoing sound streams affect oscillatory entrainment. Neuronal synchronization to speech was enhanced at 4.5 Hz (the putative universal rate of speech) and showed a differential pattern to that of clicks, particularly at higher rates. PLV to speech decreased with increasing jitter but remained superior to clicks. Surprisingly, PLV entrainment to clicks was invariant to periodicity manipulations. Our findings provide evidence that the brain's neural entrainment to complex sounds is enhanced and more sensitized when processing speech-like stimuli, even at the syllable level, relative to nonspeech sounds. The fact that this specialization is apparent even under passive listening suggests a priority of the auditory system for synchronizing to behaviorally relevant signals.

The challenge of controlling an auditory BCI in the case of severe motor disability

BackgroundThe locked-in syndrome (LIS), due to a lesion in the pons, impedes communication. This situation can also be met after some severe brain injury or in advanced Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). In the most severe condition, the persons cannot communicate at all because of a complete oculomotor paralysis (Complete LIS or CLIS). This even prevents the detection of consciousness. Some studies suggest that auditory brain–computer interface (BCI) could restore a communication through a « yes–no» code.MethodsWe developed an auditory EEG-based interface which makes use of voluntary modulations of attention, to restore a yes–no communication code in non-responding persons. This binary BCI uses repeated speech sounds (alternating “yes” on the right ear and “no” on the left ear) corresponding to either frequent (short) or rare (long) stimuli. Users are instructed to pay attention to the relevant stimuli only. We tested this BCI with 18 healthy subjects, and 7 people with severe motor disability (3 “classical” persons with locked-in syndrome and 4 persons with ALS).ResultsWe report online BCI performance and offline event-related potential analysis. On average in healthy subjects, online BCI accuracy reached 86% based on 50 questions. Only one out of 18 subjects could not perform above chance level. Ten subjects had an accuracy above 90%. However, most patients could not produce online performance above chance level, except for two people with ALS who obtained 100% accuracy. We report individual event-related potentials and their modulation by attention. In addition to the classical P3b, we observed a signature of sustained attention on responses to frequent sounds, but in healthy subjects and patients with good BCI control only.ConclusionsAuditory BCI can be very well controlled by healthy subjects, but it is not a guarantee that it can be readily used by the target population of persons in LIS or CLIS. A conclusion that is supported by a few previous findings in BCI and should now trigger research to assess the reasons of such a gap in order to propose new and efficient solutions.Clinical trial registrations: No. NCT02567201 (2015) and NCT03233282 (2013).

Phonetics of Early Bilingualism

This article presents an overview of recent research on the phonetics of early bilinguals, individuals who have acquired both of their languages early in life, by either growing up being exposed to two languages since birth (i.e., simultaneous bilinguals) or having initially learned their first language with the second language introduced at a later stage during their childhood (i.e., early sequential or successive/consecutive bilinguals). This review puts forth empirical evidence from methodologically and theoretically diverse studies on the phonetics of early bilingualism and considers explanations for the observed patterns of cross-linguistic influence on the production, perception, and processing of sounds in both of their languages. Throughout, this article discusses the critical significance of early linguistic experience on bilingual speech patterns, how early-onset bilinguals perceive speech sounds in each language, bilinguals’ phonetic abilities when producing language-specific segmental and suprasegmental features, and the dynamic nature of cross-language sound interactions in early bilingual speech.

Short- and long-term neuroplasticity interact during the perceptual learning of concurrent speech.

Plasticity from auditory experience shapes the brain's encoding and perception of sound. However, whether such long-term plasticity alters the trajectory of short-term plasticity during speech processing has yet to be investigated. Here, we explored the neural mechanisms and interplay between short- and long-term neuroplasticity for rapid auditory perceptual learning of concurrent speech sounds in young, normal-hearing musicians and nonmusicians. Participants learned to identify double-vowel mixtures during ~ 45min training sessions recorded simultaneously with high-density electroencephalography (EEG). We analyzed frequency-following responses (FFRs) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate neural correlates of learning at subcortical and cortical levels, respectively. Although both groups showed rapid perceptual learning, musicians showed faster behavioral decisions than nonmusicians overall. Learning-related changes were not apparent in brainstem FFRs. However, plasticity was highly evident in cortex, where ERPs revealed unique hemispheric asymmetries between groups suggestive of different neural strategies (musicians: right hemisphere bias; nonmusicians: left hemisphere). Source reconstruction and the early (150-200ms) time course of these effects localized learning-induced cortical plasticity to auditory-sensory brain areas. Our findings reinforce the domain-general benefits of musicianship but reveal that successful speech sound learning is driven by a critical interplay between long- and short-term mechanisms of auditory plasticity, which first emerge at a cortical level.

Sound-based Two-factor Authentication: Vulnerabilities and Redesign

Reducing the level of user effort involved in traditional two-factor authentication (TFA) constitutes an important research topic. An interesting representative approach, Sound-Proof , leverages ambient sounds to detect the proximity between the second-factor device (phone) and the login terminal (browser), and it eliminates the need for the user to transfer PIN codes. In this article, we identify a weakness of the Sound-Proof system that makes it completely vulnerable to passive “environment guessing” and active “environment manipulating” remote attackers and proximity attackers. Addressing these security issues, we propose Listening-Watch , a new TFA mechanism based on a wearable device (watch/bracelet) and active browser-generated random speech sounds. As the user attempts to log in, the browser populates a short random code encoded into speech, and the login succeeds if the watch’s audio recording contains this code (decoded using speech recognition ) and is similar enough to the browser’s audio recording. The remote attacker, who has guessed/manipulated the user’s environment, will be defeated, since authentication success relies upon the presence of the random code in watch’s recordings. The proximity attacker will also be defeated unless it is extremely close (&lt;50 cm) to the watch, since the wearable microphones are usually designed to capture only nearby sounds (e.g., voice commands).

Characteristics of different Mandarin pronunciation element perception: evidence based on a multifeature paradigm for recording MMN and P3a components of phonemic changes in speech sounds.

As a tonal language, Mandarin Chinese has the following pronunciation elements for each syllable: the vowel, consonant, tone, duration, and intensity. Revealing the characteristics of auditory-related cortical processing of these different pronunciation elements is interesting. A Mandarin pronunciation multifeature paradigm was designed, during which a standard stimulus and five different phonemic deviant stimuli were presented. The electroencephalogram (EEG) data were recorded with 256-electrode high-density EEG equipment. Time-domain and source localization analyses were conducted to demonstrate waveform characteristics and locate the sources of the cortical processing of mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a components following different stimuli. Vowel and consonant differences elicited distinct MMN and P3a components, but tone and duration differences did not. Intensity differences elicited distinct MMN components but not P3a components. For MMN and P3a components, the activated cortical areas were mainly in the frontal-temporal lobe. However, the regions and intensities of the cortical activation were significantly different among the components for the various deviant stimuli. The activated cortical areas of the MMN and P3a components elicited by vowels and consonants seemed to be larger and show more intense activation. The auditory processing centers use different auditory-related cognitive resources when processing different Mandarin pronunciation elements. Vowels and consonants carry more information for speech comprehension; moreover, more neurons in the cortex may be involved in the recognition and cognitive processing of these elements.

Understanding of Speech Production in Cleft Lip/Palate

A cleft lip is a disorder caused by the incomplete joining of the lips or palate during fetal development. This condition can result in a variety of physical impairments, speech impairments, and even psychological impairments that can affect a person’s life. Patients with cleft lip usually suffer from dental problems, speech problems, and breathing and hearing problems. This condition can certainly lead to emotional and social problems that require attention from various parties, including surgeons, dentists, speech therapists, and psychologists, essential. Patients with cleft disorders usually have an inability to produce speech sounds due to the insufficient amount of air pressure passing through the oral cavity. The severity of the disorder depends on various factors such as the intensity of the cleft, age at the surgery, and hearing loss. Early support and treatment can greatly improve patients’ quality of life. It is necessary to conduct comprehensive research to address the different issues associated with cleft lip/palate. This involves not only healthcare professionals, such as speech-language pathologists, surgeons, orthodontists, and pediatric dentists, but also communication experts, such as linguists, to develop effective treatments and strategies. This review article discusses the relationship between clefts and speech production, as well as the factors that play a role in improving the quality of life of patients with cleft. The article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of clefts, serving as a reference for dentists, surgeons, linguists, and other professionals who work with cleft patients.

Japanese Language Intonation By Japanese Language Education Students

When learning Japanese we will come across sentences that are the same but have different meanings. Because of the similarity of the sentences, many students who study Japanese often make mistakes in pronouncing the sentence and also in understanding the true meaning of it. In written language, the meaning of sentences in Japanese can be distinguished by punctuation. For example, an interrogative sentence can be distinguished by looking at the ka(か) particle behind the sentence, then a command sentence, and so on can be identified by looking at the predicate. However, in conversations, especially informal conversations, it becomes vague, for example, the loss of the ka(か) particle in interrogative sentences and so on. This can be understood by the interlocutor when we use the right intonation. In learning Japanese, less is taught about intonation differences, and there are many misunderstandings when communicating with Japanese people. Therefore, the researcher did study about the difference in meaning caused by intonation in the same sentence. This study aimed to identify intonation in sentences produced by students of the Japanese language study program. This research was carried out using exploratory qualitative research methods and data were collected using in-depth interviews. The data collected in the form of spoken sentences spoken by Japanese language study program students who are also native Japanese were classified, analyzed, and then described in writing. Interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic content analysis using a Speech Analyzer (SA) as a tool for recording, transcribing, and analyzing speech sounds. Linguists and ethnomusicologists can use SA to investigate, imitate, and explain the acoustic sounds of human language. The main respondents were students of the UNIMA Japanese Language Education Study Program. The number of respondents targeted was 30 people with a duration of 15 min of interviews. The selection of respondents were 5th-semester students who had studied Japanese for approximately 2 years and met the criteria of having studied bunpo and dokkai. Other data sources are in the form of linguistic theory and language comparison&#x0D; Keywords: language, intonation, Japanese, , education, students

Degraded inferior colliculus responses to complex sounds in prenatally exposed VPA rats

BackgroundIndividuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often exhibit altered sensory processing and deficits in language development. Prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA) increases the risk for ASD and impairs both receptive and expressive language. Like individuals with ASD, rodents prenatally exposed to VPA exhibit degraded auditory cortical processing and abnormal neural activity to sounds. Disrupted neuronal morphology has been documented in earlier processing areas of the auditory pathway in VPA-exposed rodents, but there are no studies documenting early auditory pathway physiology. Therefore, the objective of this study is to characterize inferior colliculus (IC) responses to different sounds in rats prenatally exposed to VPA compared to saline-exposed rats.MethodsIn vivo extracellular multiunit recordings from the inferior colliculus were collected in response to tones, speech sounds, and noise burst trains.ResultsOur results indicate that the overall response to speech sounds was degraded in VPA-exposed rats compared to saline-exposed controls, but responses to tones and noise burst trains were unaltered.ConclusionsThese results are consistent with observations in individuals with autism that neural responses to complex sounds, like speech, are often altered, and lays the foundation for future studies of potential therapeutics to improve auditory processing in the VPA rat model of ASD.

Enhanced sensitivity to pitch perception and its possible relation to language acquisition in autism.

Fascinations for or aversions to particular sounds are a familiar feature of autism, as is an ability to reproduce another person's utterances, precisely copying the other person's prosody as well as their words. Such observations seem to indicate not only that autistic people can pay close attention to what they hear, but also that they have the ability to perceive the finer details of auditory stimuli. This is consistent with the previously reported consensus that absolute pitch is more common in autistic individuals than in neurotypicals. We take this to suggest that autistic people have perception that allows them to pay attention to fine details. It is important to establish whether or not this is so as autism is often presented as a deficit rather than a difference. We therefore undertook a narrative literature review of studies of auditory perception, in autistic and nonautistic individuals, focussing on any differences in processing linguistic and nonlinguistic sounds. We find persuasive evidence that nonlinguistic auditory perception in autistic children differs from that of nonautistic children. This is supported by the additional finding of a higher prevalence of absolute pitch and enhanced pitch discriminating abilities in autistic children compared to neurotypical children. Such abilities appear to stem from atypical perception, which is biased toward local-level information necessary for processing pitch and other prosodic features. Enhanced pitch discriminating abilities tend to be found in autistic individuals with a history of language delay, suggesting possible reciprocity. Research on various aspects of language development in autism also supports the hypothesis that atypical pitch perception may be accountable for observed differences in language development in autism. The results of our review of previously published studies are consistent with the hypothesis that auditory perception, and particularly pitch perception, in autism are different from the norm but not always impaired. Detail-oriented pitch perception may be an advantage given the right environment. We speculate that unusually heightened sensitivity to pitch differences may be at the cost of the normal development of the perception of the sounds that contribute most to early language development. The acquisition of speech and language may be a process that normally involves an enhanced perception of speech sounds at the expense of the processing of nonlinguistic sounds, but autistic children may not give speech sounds this same priority.

Comparison of Auditory and Visual Short-Term Memory Capabilities using a Serious Game Application

A comprehensive serious game application has been designed and implemented to examine the capacity and effective- ness of short-term auditory and visual memory, otherwise known as working memory in human subjects. Participants engaged in an adaptation of the well-known paired association game that entails turning over cards and recalling their placement within a 2D matrix structure of various resolutions. Each trial introduced either visual icons (vision only condition) or auditory objects (audio-only condition). User performance was evaluated through a detailed statistical analysis focusing only on the highest 6x8 resolution condition in the application. Findings suggest that visual memory did not conclusively outperform auditory memory in the context of this game. However, within the scope of auditory stimuli, familiar iconic sounds, such as excerpts of speech and commonplace sounds, were recalled more effectively than unfamiliar, synthetic sounds like parametric waveforms. Furthermore, performance appeared to be influenced by demographic factors, with male and younger subjects yielding superior results.