On the Perceptual Organization of Speech

A general account of auditory perceptual organization has developed in the past 2 decades. It relies on primitive devices akin to the Gestalt principles of organization to assign sensory elements to probable groupings and invokes secondary schematic processes to confirm or to repair the possible organization. Although this conceptualization is intended to apply universally, the variety and arrangement of acoustic constituents of speech violate Gestalt principles at numerous junctures, cohering perceptually, nonetheless. The authors report 3 experiments on organization in phonetic perception, using sine wave synthesis to evade the Gestalt rules and the schematic processes alike. These findings falsify a general auditory account, showing that phonetic perceptual organization is achieved by specific sensitivity to the acoustic modulations characteristic of speech signals

First results from 2+1 dynamical quark flavors on an anisotropic lattice: light-hadron spectroscopy and setting the strange-quark mass

We present the first light-hadron spectroscopy on a set of $N_f=2+1$ dynamical, anisotropic lattices. A convenient set of coordinates that parameterize the two-dimensional plane of light and strange-quark masses is introduced. These coordinates are used to extrapolate data obtained at the simulated values of the quark masses to the physical light and strange-quark point. A measurement of the Sommer scale on these ensembles is made, and the performance of the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm used for generating the ensembles is estimated.Comment: 24 pages. Hadron Spectrum Collaboratio

Dichotic integration of acoustic-phonetic information: Competition from extraneous formants increases the effect of second-formant attenuation on intelligibility

Differences in ear of presentation and level do not prevent effective integration of concurrent speech cues such as formant frequencies. For example, presenting the higher formants of a consonant-vowel syllable in the opposite ear to the first formant protects them from upward spread of masking, allowing them to remain effective speech cues even after substantial attenuation. This study used three-formant (F1+F2+F3) analogues of natural sentences and extended the approach to include competitive conditions. Target formants were presented dichotically (F1+F3; F2), either alone or accompanied by an extraneous competitor for F2 (i.e., F1±F2C+F3; F2) that listeners must reject to optimize recognition. F2C was created by inverting the F2 frequency contour and using the F2 amplitude contour without attenuation. In experiment 1, F2C was always absent and intelligibility was unaffected until F2 attenuation exceeded 30 dB; F2 still provided useful information at 48-dB attenuation. In experiment 2, attenuating F2 by 24 dB caused considerable loss of intelligibility when F2C was present, but had no effect in its absence. Factors likely to contribute to this interaction include informational masking from F2C acting to swamp the acoustic-phonetic information carried by F2, and interaural inhibition from F2C acting to reduce the effective level of F2

Analogy and disanalogy in production and perception of speech

A varied psychological vocabulary now describes the cognitive and social conditions of language production, the ultimate result of which is the mechanical action of vocal musculature in spoken expression. Following the logic of the speech chain, descriptions of production have often exhibited a clear analogy to accounts of perception. This reciprocality is especially evident in explanations that rely on reafference to control production, on articulation to inform perception, and on strict parity between produced and perceived form to provide invariance in the relation between abstract linguistic objects and observed expression. However, a causal account of production and perception cannot derive solely from this hopeful analogy. Despite sharing of abstract linguistic representations, the control functions in production and perception as well as the constraints on their use stand in fundamental disanalogy. This is readily seen in the different adaptive challenges to production -to speak in a single voice -and perception -to resolve familiar linguistic properties in any voice. This acknowledgement sets descriptive and theoretical challenges that break the symmetry of production and perception. As a consequence, this recognition dislodges an old impasse between the psychoacoustic and motoric accounts in the regulation of production and perception

THE STREAM OF SPEECH*

Abstract. The use of sinusoidal replicas of speech signals reveals that listeners can perceive speech solely from temporally coherent spectral variation of non speech acoustic elements. This sensitivity to coherent change in acoustic stimulation is analogous to the sensitivity to change in configurations of visual stimuli, as detailed by Johansson. The similarities and potential differences between these two kinds of perceptual functions are described