Providing evidence for the universal tendencies of patterns in the world's languages can be difficult, as it is impossible to sample all possible languages, and linguistic samples are subject to interpretation. However, experimental techniques, such as artificial grammar learning paradigms, make it possible to uncover the psychological reality of…

We report 3 experiments that examined whether presentation of a spoken word creates an attentional bottleneck associated with lexical processing in the absence of a response to that word. A spoken word and a visual stimulus were presented in quick succession, but only the visual stimulus demanded a response. Response times to the visual stimulus…

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural basis of comprehension and perceptual learning of artificially degraded [noise vocoded (NV)] speech. Fifteen participants were scanned while listening to 6-channel vocoded words, which are difficult for naive listeners to comprehend, but can be readily learned with…

This study aims to identify aspects of speech-in-noise recognition that are susceptible to training, focusing on whether listeners can learn to adapt to target talkers ("tune in") and learn to better cope with various maskers ("tune out") after short-term training. Listeners received training on English sentence recognition in…

This study investigates how inaccurate phoneme processing affects recognition of partially onset-overlapping pairs like "DAFFOdil-DEFIcit" and of minimal pairs like "flash-flesh" in second-language listening. Two cross-modal priming experiments examined differences between native (L1) and second-language (L2) listeners at two…

Theories of verbal self-monitoring generally assume an internal (pre-articulatory) monitoring channel, but there is debate about whether this channel relies on speech perception or on production-internal mechanisms. Perception-based theories predict that listening to one's own inner speech has similar behavioural consequences as listening to…

Visual speech perception has become a topic of considerable interest to speech researchers. Previous research has demonstrated that perceivers neurally encode and use speech information from the visual modality, and this information has been found to facilitate spoken word recognition in tasks such as lexical decision (Kim, Davis, & Krins,…

Six Mandarin affricates (i.e., zh[ts], ch[ts[superscript h]], z[ts], c[ts[superscript h]], j[tc], q[tc[superscript h]), which are not universally present in other languages, have been extensively challenging for learners of Mandarin Chinese. In the current study, perception of these affricates was investigated via an experiment in which native…

Describes the Verbal Transformation Effect (VTE): When listeners hear the same word repeated very many times at a rapid rate, the word tends to be perceived as other words. Reports lexical effects in the VTE and examines their cause. (Author/VWL)

Examines the development of a computational model of auditory grouping processes informed by psychoacoustic experimentation. The experimental theme was to quantify the contribution of grouping principles, rather than simply to demonstrate their existence. This article demonstrates the importance of avoiding prespecified procedures for grouping…

Argues that phonemes play a central role in speech recognition. Presents simulations showing how the recognition of nonsense syllables can be very well predicted from the recognition of their component phonemes. Suggests that a model in which syllables are factored into their phonemes can account for the results of multidimensional phonetic…

Used a semantic and morpho-syntactic priming paradigm to examine at which processing stage the advantage of blind adults may arise. Concludes that the faster speech comprehension skills of blind adults may originate from a more efficient perceptual analysis rather than from a more extended use of semantic or morpho-syntactic context information.…

Discusses two auditory comprehension studies that investigated the role of focus, as conveyed by a pitch accent, in the comprehension of relative clauses preceded by a complex noun phrase. Findings include focus attracts modifiers, and pitch accents for new phrases differ acoustically from pitch accents for contrastive phrases. (46 references)…

Reviews studies in which perceptual cue trading data have been compared with computational models and examines the perception of contrast between the voiceless fricative "s" and the voiceless affricate "ts." Nine subjects listened to a total of 6 tokens each of 193 stimuli and labeled each stimulus as containing either of the…

When presented with stimuli that contain illegal consonant clusters, Japanese listeners tend to hear an illusory vowel that makes their perception conform to the phonotactics of the language. Assesses an alternate hypothesis that this illusion is due to a top-down lexical effect. (Author/VWL)