The Role of Talker in Adjusting for Different Speaking Rates in Speech Perception

Speech perception is heavily influenced by acoustic context effects, where perception of a sound is influenced by acoustic properties of surrounding sounds. Talker variability, or the acoustic variability among different talkers, can disrupt these context effects. Studies have shown that talker variability does impact Spectral Contrast Effects (SCEs; an acoustic context effect induced by variations in frequency), but it is unknown if Temporal Contrast Effects (TCEs; an acoustic context effect induced by speech rate) are similarly affected. To test this, on each trial, listeners heard a context sentence (spoken at a fast or slow rate) followed by the target word which they identified as “deer” or “tier”. Context sentences differed across three blocks (One Talker/One Sentence, One Talker/200 Sentences, and 200 Talkers/200 Sentences). TCEs were calculated as the percent “tier” responses following fast sentences (where more “tier” responses are expected) minus the percent “tier” responses following slow sentences (where fewer “tier” responses are expected). Talker variability significantly influenced TCEs, with larger TCEs in the One Talker/One Sentence block than the 200 Talkers/200 Sentences block. Thus, TCEs pattern similarly to SCEs in that talker variability decreases the sizes of acoustic context effects in speech perception.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1063/thumbnail.jp

Stimulus statistics change sounds from near-indiscriminable to hyperdiscriminable

Objects and events in the sensory environment are generally predictable, making most of the energy impinging upon sensory transducers redundant. Given this fact, efficient sensory systems should detect, extract, and exploit predictability in order to optimize sensitivity to less predictable inputs that are, by definition, more informative. Not only are perceptual systems sensitive to changes in physical stimulus properties, but growing evidence reveals sensitivity both to relative predictability of stimuli and to co-occurrence of stimulus attributes within stimuli. Recent results revealed that auditory perception rapidly reorganizes to efficiently capture covariance among stimulus attributes. Acoustic properties per se were perceptually abandoned, and sounds were instead processed relative to patterns of cooccurrence. Here, we show that listeners\u27 ability to distinguish sounds from one another is driven primarily by the extent to which they are consistent or inconsistent with patterns of covariation among stimulus attributes and, to a lesser extent, whether they are heard frequently or infrequently. When sounds were heard frequently and deviated minimally from the prevailing pattern of covariance among attributes, they were poorly discriminated from one another. In stark contrast, when sounds were heard rarely and markedly violated the pattern of covariance, they became hyperdiscriminable with discrimination performance beyond apparent limits of the auditory system. Plausible cortical candidates underlying these dramatic changes in perceptual organization are discussed. These findings support efficient coding of stimulus statistical structure as a model for both perceptual and neural organization. © 2016 Stilp, Kluender. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Pan panthée ? Au sujet du dieu-bouc et des images dites panthées

L’image romaine d’un dieu-bouc issue d’un contexte sacré nous permet, d’une part, de poser la question du rôle du dieu-bouc à Rome, d’autre part, de nous donner l’occasion de revoir la problématique des images communément appelées «panthées». Nous avons pu ainsi retenir qu’un certain nombre des représentations romaines du dieu-bouc ont dû être en rapport avec le domaine sacré, plus précisément avec le culte de Silvanus. Comme autre résultat, il s’avère que l’iconographie liée habituellement au terme «image panthée», n’avait pas de lien exclusif avec des divinités vénérées comme «pantheus» ou «panthea». Ces termes relevant de conceptions religieuses n’étaient dans l’Antiquité pas corrélés avec une typologie iconographique

Sensitivity to Natural Pairing of Musical Pitch and Timbre

Two of the primary perceptual properties of music are its pitch and timbre (sound quality). While musical instruments vary widely in their pitches and timbres, there is a tendency to hear higher pitches with “brighter” timbres and lower pitches with” darker” timbres. Here, listeners labeled musical pitches as high or low when played by one of four instruments. In the canonical blocks, instruments with “brighter” timbres (trumpet, oboe) played the higher pitch, and instruments with “darker” timbres (trombone, tuba) played a lower pitch. In the reversed block, these pairings were switched. Performance was excellent in the canonical blocks, but accuracy was worse in the reversed block. Accuracy performance was significantly correlated with a measure of musical training. This pattern of results parallels that seen in speech, suggesting a general perceptual sensitivity to natural pairings between sound characteristics