Perceptual learning, talker specificity, and sound change
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Perceptual learning is when listeners hear novel speech input and shift their subsequent perceptual behavior. In this paper we consider the relationship between sound change and perceptual learning. We spell out the connections we see between perceptual learning and different approaches to sound change and explain how a deeper empirical understanding of the properties of perceptual learning might benefit sound change models. We propose that questions about when listeners generalize their perceptual learning to new talkers might be of of particular interest to theories of sound change. We review the relevant literature, noting that studies of perceptual learning generalization across talkers of the same gender are lacking. Finally, we present new experimental data aimed at filling that gap by comparing cross-talker generalization of fricative boundary perceptual learning in same-gender and different-gender pairs. We find that listeners are much more likely to generalize what they have learned across same-gender pairs, even when the different-gender pairs have more similar fricatives. We discuss implications for sound change.Keywords:
Perceptual Learning
Sound change
Spell
Auditory perception
Sound perception
Neurocomputational speech processing
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Auditory perception
Sound perception
Neurophysiology
Speech sound
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The function of rapid perceptual learning for speech in adult listeners is poorly understood. On the one hand, perceptual learning of speech results in rapid and long-lasting improvements in the perception of many types of distorted and degraded speech signals. On the other hand, this learning is highly specific to stimuli that were encountered during its acquisition. Therefore, it is unclear whether past perceptual learning could support future speech perception under ecological conditions. Here, we hypothesize that rapid perceptual learning is a resource that is recruited when new speech challenges are encountered and used to support perception under those specific conditions. We review three lines of evidence related to aspects of this hypothesis – about the specificity of learning, the general nature of associations between rapid perceptual learning and speech perception and rapid perceptual-learning in populations with poor perception under adverse conditions.
Perceptual Learning
Categorical Perception
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Perceptual learning is when listeners hear novel speech input and shift their subsequent perceptual behavior. In this paper we consider the relationship between sound change and perceptual learning. We spell out the connections we see between perceptual learning and different approaches to sound change and explain how a deeper empirical understanding of the properties of perceptual learning might benefit sound change models. We propose that questions about when listeners generalize their perceptual learning to new talkers might be of of particular interest to theories of sound change. We review the relevant literature, noting that studies of perceptual learning generalization across talkers of the same gender are lacking. Finally, we present new experimental data aimed at filling that gap by comparing cross-talker generalization of fricative boundary perceptual learning in same-gender and different-gender pairs. We find that listeners are much more likely to generalize what they have learned across same-gender pairs, even when the different-gender pairs have more similar fricatives. We discuss implications for sound change.
Perceptual Learning
Sound change
Spell
Auditory perception
Sound perception
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Historically, auditory research has focused predominately upon how relatively simple acoustic signals are represented in the neuronal responses of the auditory periphery. However, in order to understand the neurophysiology underlying speech perception, the ultimate objective is to discover how speech sounds are represented in the central auditory system and to relate that representation to the perception of speech as a meaningful acoustic signal. This paper reviews three areas that pertain to the central auditory representation of speech: (1) the differences in neural representation of speech sounds at different levels of the auditory system; (2) the relation between the representation of sound in the auditory pathway and the perception/misperception of speech, and (3) the training-related plasticity of speech sound neural representation and speech perception.
Representation
Neurocomputational speech processing
Auditory System
Auditory perception
Sound perception
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Auditory perception
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The complexity of bird vocalizations has fascinated us throughout the ages and there has long been the suspicion that birds are capable of producing, perceiving, and learning features of their songs that are beyond the capabilities of human hearing. Other investigators point to similarities between song production and perception in birds and special perceptual and attentional processes that are involved in the perception of speech by humans. Evidence will be reviewed that birds are born with early perceptual predispositions for learning species-specific vocalizations and demonstrate unusual efficiency in perceiving species-specific vocalizations throughout adulthood. In spite of these similarities with humans, birds have other auditory perceptual biases that are clearly different from humans as in the perception of tonal patterns. Birds, like humans, show a number of phenomena that aid perception under adverse conditions such as the binaural release from masking and the precedence effect and the detection of vocalizations in noise appears to follow from general principles of masking which has implications for studies of the effect of noise on birds in nature. [Work supported by NIH.]
Auditory perception
Perceptual Learning
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Over two decades ago, Jenkins proposed a broad taxonomy of acoustic information which addresses the perception of objects, places, and events in the world around the listener [J.J. Jenkins “Acoustic information for objects, places, and events,” Persistence and Change: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Event Perception, edited by W. H. Warren and R. E. Shaw, Erlbaum, (2006)]. Although lesser known than some of his other publications, this chapter has anticipated several future directions in auditory research by asking what is being perceived by the listener and why. Inspired by this taxonomy, our research on environmental sound perception by normal-hearing and cochlear implant listeners has investigated how objects and events are perceived when sensory input is degraded. Experiments with vocoded environmental sounds of varying spectral resolution indicate large differences among individual sounds in the amount of spectral resolution required for identification. Temporally patterned sounds generally need a lower spectral resolution than harmonically rich sounds. However, with training, perception of environmental sounds can substantially improve and generalize to novel sounds, potentially including speech. Findings in cochlear implant listeners further indicate strong correlations between speech and environmental sound perception abilities, suggesting a considerable overlap in the perception of these two ecologically significant sound classes.
Sound perception
Auditory perception
Identification
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Introduction: Auditory perception of temporal ordering is the result of acoustic signal processing, since it refers to perception of a sound event or a change in that, within a defined time interval. It is considered a fundamental skill in auditory perception of verbal and nonverbal sound, the perception of music, phonemes, etc.
Auditory perception
Time perception
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Perceptual learning for speech remains substantial even in older adults, but the functional significance of this observation is not well understood. It has been suggested that perceptual learning might serve to support listening in adverse conditions by promoting behavioural and neural plasticity, but this hypothesis is not consistent with the acoustic specificity of learning. Instead, we now suggest that in the context of speech perception, perceptual learning might be best viewed as one of the capacities that, like working memory, support speech perception in an on-line fashion. Consistent with this hypothesis, we present data that rapid perceptual learning of one speech task accounts for substantial individual differences in other speech tasks even after accounting for the potential correlations between different indices of speech perception.
Perceptual Learning
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