scholarly journals Zebra finches are sensitive to prosodic features of human speech

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1787) ◽  
pp. 20140480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle J. Spierings ◽  
Carel ten Cate
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Zebra Finches ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Paralinguistic Information ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Human Specific

Variation in pitch, amplitude and rhythm adds crucial paralinguistic information to human speech. Such prosodic cues can reveal information about the meaning or emphasis of a sentence or the emotional state of the speaker. To examine the hypothesis that sensitivity to prosodic cues is language independent and not human specific, we tested prosody perception in a controlled experiment with zebra finches. Using a go/no-go procedure, subjects were trained to discriminate between speech syllables arranged in XYXY patterns with prosodic stress on the first syllable and XXYY patterns with prosodic stress on the final syllable. To systematically determine the salience of the various prosodic cues (pitch, duration and amplitude) to the zebra finches, they were subjected to five tests with different combinations of these cues. The zebra finches generalized the prosodic pattern to sequences that consisted of new syllables and used prosodic features over structural ones to discriminate between stimuli. This strong sensitivity to the prosodic pattern was maintained when only a single prosodic cue was available. The change in pitch was treated as more salient than changes in the other prosodic features. These results show that zebra finches are sensitive to the same prosodic cues known to affect human speech perception.

scholarly journals THE USE OF PROSODIC CUES IN LEARNING NEW WORDS IN AN UNFAMILIAR LANGUAGE

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahyang Kim ◽  
Mirjam Broersma ◽  
Taehong Cho
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Initial Exposure ◽  
New Words ◽  
Artificial Language Learning ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Nonnative Language

The artificial language learning paradigm was used to investigate to what extent the use of prosodic features is universally applicable or specifically language driven in learning an unfamiliar language, and how nonnative prosodic patterns can be learned. Listeners of unrelated languages—Dutch (n= 100) and Korean (n= 100)—participated. The words to be learned varied with prosodic cues: no prosody, fundamental frequency (F0) rise in initial and final position, final lengthening, and final lengthening plus F0 rise. Both listener groups performed well above chance level with the final lengthening cue, confirming its crosslinguistic use. As for final F0 rise, however, Dutch listeners did not use it until the second exposure session, whereas Korean listeners used it at initial exposure. Neither group used initial F0 rise. On the basis of these results, F0 and durational cues appear to be universal in the sense that they are used across languages for their universally applicable auditory-perceptual saliency, but how they are used is language specific and constrains the use of available prosodic cues in processing a nonnative language. A discussion on how these findings bear on theories of second language (L2) speech perception and learning is provided.

scholarly journals Deep Neural Network Model of Hearing-Impaired Speech-in-Noise Perception

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Haro ◽  
Christopher J. Smalt ◽  
Gregory A. Ciccarelli ◽  
Thomas F. Quatieri
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Speech Perception ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Deep Neural Network ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Auditory Function ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Digit Recognition ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Hearing Damage

Many individuals struggle to understand speech in listening scenarios that include reverberation and background noise. An individual's ability to understand speech arises from a combination of peripheral auditory function, central auditory function, and general cognitive abilities. The interaction of these factors complicates the prescription of treatment or therapy to improve hearing function. Damage to the auditory periphery can be studied in animals; however, this method alone is not enough to understand the impact of hearing loss on speech perception. Computational auditory models bridge the gap between animal studies and human speech perception. Perturbations to the modeled auditory systems can permit mechanism-based investigations into observed human behavior. In this study, we propose a computational model that accounts for the complex interactions between different hearing damage mechanisms and simulates human speech-in-noise perception. The model performs a digit classification task as a human would, with only acoustic sound pressure as input. Thus, we can use the model's performance as a proxy for human performance. This two-stage model consists of a biophysical cochlear-nerve spike generator followed by a deep neural network (DNN) classifier. We hypothesize that sudden damage to the periphery affects speech perception and that central nervous system adaptation over time may compensate for peripheral hearing damage. Our model achieved human-like performance across signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) under normal-hearing (NH) cochlear settings, achieving 50% digit recognition accuracy at −20.7 dB SNR. Results were comparable to eight NH participants on the same task who achieved 50% behavioral performance at −22 dB SNR. We also simulated medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) and auditory nerve fiber (ANF) loss, which worsened digit-recognition accuracy at lower SNRs compared to higher SNRs. Our simulated performance following ANF loss is consistent with the hypothesis that cochlear synaptopathy impacts communication in background noise more so than in quiet. Following the insult of various cochlear degradations, we implemented extreme and conservative adaptation through the DNN. At the lowest SNRs (<0 dB), both adapted models were unable to fully recover NH performance, even with hundreds of thousands of training samples. This implies a limit on performance recovery following peripheral damage in our human-inspired DNN architecture.

scholarly journals Contributions of Nonhuman Animal Models to Understanding Human Speech Perception

2012 ◽  
pp. 203-220
Author(s):  
Keith R. Kluender ◽  
Andrew J. Lotto ◽  
Lori L. Holt
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Animal Models ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Human Speech

scholarly journals Configuraciones tonales de frases entonativas en enunciados aseverativos del español de la Ciudad de México

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-141
Author(s):  
Alberto Rodríguez Márquez
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
The Other ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Speech Corpus ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Speech Data ◽  
Intonational Phrases

The objective of this paper is to describe the prosodic features of the final intonation contour of minor intonational phrases (ip) and the tonemes of major intonational phrases (IP) in Mexico City’s Spanish variety. The speech data was taken from a spontaneous speech corpus made from speakers from two social networks: neighborhood and labor. Final intonation contours of ip show a predominantly rising movement. These contours are generally produced with greater length in the last syllable of the ip, which represents the most significant difference between both networks in the case of oxitone endings. On the other hand, tonemes are predominantly descendant, although the circumflex accent has an important number of cases within the data set. Tonemes produced by the neighborhood network are produced with larger length than those from the labor network.

scholarly journals The Translation of Ellipsis as Identity Marker in the Literary Dialogue

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Mona Arhire
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Loss Of Information ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Formal Equivalence ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
State Of Mind

AbstractApart from the ellipsis occurring in discourse as a fairly common cohesive device, the literary dialogue oftentimes uses ellipsis as a stylistic or rhetorical device or as a means of endowing characters with idiolectal or sociolectal features. This paper examines such instances of ellipsis which contribute to the construction of the literary heroes’ identity through their speech, while providing them with features distinguishing them from the other characters either in terms of social identity or emotional state. The study is based on examples depicted from the dialogue of a number of literary works written in English and selected so as to exhibit a variety of functions which ellipsis acquires to complete some heroes’ identity or state of mind. Considering the importance of the information embedded in such ellipses, a contrastive approach to translation is obvious. The analysis focuses on the translation of ellipsis from English into Romanian and scrutinizes the situations when structural differences between English and Romanian prevent formal equivalence, which triggers an important loss of information in translation. The findings lead to conclusions relative to translation solutions that can be adopted to compensate for the scarcity of structural similarities between the two languages in contact in translation.

The waking-to-dreaming continuum and the effects of emotion

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 947-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Mental Functioning ◽  
The Continuum

The three-dimensional “AIM model” proposed by Hobson et al. is imaginative. However, many kinds of data suggest that the “dimensions” are not orthogonal, but closely correlated. An alternative view is presented in which mental functioning is considered as a continuum, or a group of closely linked continua, running from focused waking activity at one end, to dreaming at the other. The effect of emotional state is increasingly evident towards the dreaming end of the continuum.[Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Solms]

scholarly journals Pro-sociality without empathy

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 910-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Vasconcelos ◽  
Karen Hollis ◽  
Elise Nowbahari ◽  
Alex Kacelnik
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Comparison ◽  
Rescue Behaviour ◽  
Important Trait ◽  
Goal Directedness ◽  
Evolutionary Emergence ◽  
Behavioural Sciences ◽  
Current Standards

Empathy, the capacity to recognize and share feelings experienced by another individual, is an important trait in humans, but is not the same as pro-sociality, the tendency to behave so as to benefit another individual. Given the importance of understanding empathy's evolutionary emergence, it is unsurprising that many studies attempt to find evidence for it in other species. To address the question of what should constitute evidence for empathy, we offer a critical comparison of two recent studies of rescuing behaviour that report similar phenomena but are interpreted very differently by their authors. In one of the studies, rescue behaviour in rats was interpreted as providing evidence for empathy, whereas in the other, rescue behaviour in ants was interpreted without reference to sharing of emotions. Evidence for empathy requires showing that actor individuals possess a representation of the receiver's emotional state and are driven by the psychological goal of improving its wellbeing. Proving psychological goal-directedness by current standards involves goal-devaluation and causal sensitivity protocols, which, in our view, have not been implemented in available publications. Empathy has profound significance not only for cognitive and behavioural sciences but also for philosophy and ethics and, in our view, remains unproven outside humans.

Same stimuli, same subjects, different perception

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-252
Author(s):  
Marjoleine Sloos ◽  
Wang Lei
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Biased Perception

Abstract Believed dialect influences speech perception by linguistically naïve speakers. How much accent-induced bias affects perception of linguistically trained speakers is still unclear. This study experimentally investigates the influence of believed dialect on plosive perception by subjects who were phonetically and phonologically trained. Identical syllables were presented twice to each subject. In one session, the subjects were informed that the variety was a Mandarin dialect which has voiceless unaspirated and aspirated voiceless stops; and in the other session that it was a Wu dialect, which has voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and breathy stops. More breathy stops were reported if Wu was the believed dialect. Plosive phonation in Wu is related to lexical tone, and we show that lexical tone causes another bias to plosive perception. This suggests that linguistically trained transcribers are susceptible to higher order linguistic knowledge and it demonstrates the difficulty of avoiding biased perception when the coder forms a belief about the variety that he/she transcribes. We also advocate speech perception models which include a component that accounts for the role of expected sounds.

Prosody: A feature of languages or a feature of speakers?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Muñiz-Cachón
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Linguistic Interference ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Social situations of language coexistence have resulted in linguistic manifestations of bilingualism and diglossia, including linguistic interference, lexical loans and code switching. What role does prosody play in social bilingualism? In other words, when contact between different languages is not restricted to the individual but affects an entire speech community, does a dominant prosody exist? Does prosody vary among different linguistic varieties? In order to find an answer to these questions, we hereby show the results of a research project on the prosodic features of Asturian and Castilian spoken in the centre of Asturias. This experimental study is based on the speech of four informants from Oviedo – two men and two women – two of which speak Castilian, while the other two speak Asturian.

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