Compensation for vocal tract characteristics across native and non-native languages

Perceptual compensation for speaker vocal tract properties was investigated in four groups of listeners: native speakers of English and native speakers of Dutch, native speakers of Spanish with low proficiency in English, and Spanish–English bilinguals. Listeners categorized targets on a [sofo] to [sufu] continuum. Targets were preceded by sentences that were manipulated to have either a high or a low F1 contour. All listeners performed the categorization task for targets that were preceded by Spanish, English and Dutch precursors. Results show that listeners from each of the four language backgrounds compensate for speaker vocal tract properties regardless of language-specific vowel inventory properties. Listeners also compensate when they listen to stimuli in another language. The results suggest that patterns of compensation are mainly determined by auditory properties of precursor sentences.

[1]  L. Holt.  Temporally Nonadjacent Nonlinguistic Sounds Affect Speech Categorization , 2005, Psychological science.

[2]  Q Summerfield,et al.  Perceiving vowels from uniform spectra: Phonetic exploration of an auditory aftereffect , 1984, Perception & psychophysics.

[3]  Michael Kiefte,et al.  Absorption of reliable spectral characteristics in auditory perception. , 2008, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[4]  Paul Boersma,et al.  Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer , 2002 .

[5]  T. M. Nearey.  Static, dynamic, and relational properties in vowel perception. , 1989, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[6]  A. Lotto,et al.  Behavioral examinations of the level of auditory processing of speech context effects , 2002, Hearing Research.

[7]  Lourdes Aguilar,et al.  Hiatus and diphthong: Acoustic cues and speech situation differences , 1999, Speech Commun..

[8]  R. Plomp,et al.  Perceptual and physical space of vowel sounds. , 1969, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[9]  A. J. Watkins.  Central, auditory mechanisms of perceptual compensation for spectral-envelope distortion. , 1991, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[10]  Roel Smits,et al.  An acoustic description of the vowels of Northern and Southern Standard Dutch. , 2004, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[11]  E Klu.  Auditory color constancy: Calibration to reliable spectral properties across nonspeech context and targets , 2010 .

[12]  G. E. Peterson,et al.  Control Methods Used in a Study of the Vowels , 1951 .

[13]  Michael Kiefte,et al.  Sensitivity to change in perception of speech , 2003, Speech Commun..

[14]  A. J. Watkins,et al.  Effects of spectral contrast on perceptual compensation for spectral-envelope distortion. , 1996, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[15]  K. Kluender.  Speech perception within a biologically realistic information‐theoretic framework. , 2008 .

[16]  Matthias J. Sjerps,et al.  Hemispheric differences in the effects of context on vowel perception , 2012, Brain and Language.

[17]  Ruben van de Vijver,et al.  Pisoni, D., Remez, R. (eds.), The handbook of speech perception; Oxford, Blackwell, 2005 , 2009 .

[18]  P. Dixon.  Models of accuracy in repeated-measures designs , 2008 .

[19]  Margarita Kaushanskaya,et al.  The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. , 2007, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[20]  D. Broadbent,et al.  Information Conveyed by Vowels , 1957 .

[21]  Matthias J. Sjerps,et al.  Speaker Normalization in Speech Perception , 2008, The Handbook of Speech Perception.

[22]  J. Hillenbrand,et al.  Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. , 1994, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[23]  A. Liberman,et al.  An Experimental Study of the Acoustic Determinants of Vowel Color; Observations on One- and Two-Formant Vowels Synthesized from Spectrographic Patterns , 1952 .

[24]  Cynthia G. Clopper,et al.  Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. , 2005, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[25]  Holger Mitterer,et al.  Is Vowel Normalization Independent of Lexical Processing? , 2006, Phonetica.

[26]  R. Smits,et al.  Patterns of English phoneme confusions by native and non-native listeners. , 2004, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[27]  A. Lotto,et al.  Tuned with a Tune: Talker Normalization via General Auditory Processes , 2012, Front. Psychology.

[28]  L. Holt.  Speech categorization in context: joint effects of nonspeech and speech precursors. , 2006, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[29]  Matthias J. Sjerps,et al.  Listening to different speakers: On the time-course of perceptual compensation for vocal-tract characteristics , 2011, Neuropsychologia.

[30]  D. Broadbent,et al.  Vowel judgements and adaptation level , 1960, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[31]  Florien J. van Beinum,et al.  Perceptual normalization of the vowels of a man and a child in various contexts , 1988, Speech Commun..

[32]  Sarah C. Sullivan,et al.  Central locus for nonspeech context effects on phonetic identification. , 2003, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[33]  Matthias J. Sjerps,et al.  Constraints on the processes responsible for the extrinsic normalization of vowels , 2011, Attention, perception & psychophysics.

[34]  A. J. Watkins,et al.  Perceptual compensation for speaker differences and for spectral-envelope distortion. , 1994, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[35]  W. Strange,et al.  Dynamic specification of coarticulated vowels spoken in sentence context. , 1989, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.