Language and Speech Perception

Speech Perception:

examined at multiple levels of analysis.

(phonemes, words, sentences, text/story).

Problems arise at each level

1) Phonemes-

 

 

 

e.g. "a" is different in "baby" and "back"

Problem of Invariance:

1.

 

 

 

e.g.

2.

 

 

 

coarticulation -

Result of coarticulation:

Solutions to Problem of Invariance:

solution 1.

 

 

 

linguistic info: background to Liberman experiment

pronunciation of "b" and "p" done in a similar way.

only difference -

 

b:

 

p:

Experiment by Liberman, et. al (1957)

method:

Results:

•

•

experiment by Warren & Warren (1970)

method:

•

 

 

 

•

 

 

e.g. It was found that the *eel was on the orange.

It was found that the *eel was on the shoe.

Result:

1.

 

 

2.

 

 

3.

 

Experiment by Pollack and Pickett (1964)

Method:

Results:

•  

 

 

•  

solution 3:

McGurk Effect- found by McGurk and MacDonald, 1976

method:

Results:

Speech Perception: Next Level of Analysis:

Words: how do we perceive words?

Problem:

So, how do we perceive words?

Theory of a Mental Lexicon:

lexicon contains:

a) pronunciation:

b) spelling:

c) part of speech:

d) meaning pointer -->

Experiments to investigate existence of a lexicon:

Experiment 1:

method of Cross-model priming:

Task:

Priming:

 

 

e.g.

Results:

Conclusion:

Experiment 2: Marslen-Wilson , et. al. (1989)

Method:

Results:

follow-up exp by Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson (1996)

method:

Condition A:

 

 

 

Condition B:

Results: