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Audiovisual Speech Processing: Implications For Speech Perception And Language Development, Ryan Andrew Cannistraci

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to empirically assess the complex, multileveled relationships between audiovisual speech perception and early language development. The majority of extant language development research has justifiably focused on infants’ ability to learn language from auditory input, and indeed, infants are precocious auditory learners (Saffran & Kirkham, 2018). Complementary to auditory speech, however, are the necessarily redundant facial movements used to articulate speech. Outside of language development research, multimodal processing has been theorized to facilitate perceptual learning and cognitive development (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000), but only a small number of empirical studies have investigated how audiovisual speech perception in infancy …

Simultaneous Bilinguals’ Comprehension Of Accented Speech, Sita Carraturo

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

L2-accented speech recognition has typically been studied with monolingual listeners or late L2-learners, but simultaneous bilinguals may have a different experience: their two phonologies offer flexibility in phonological-lexical mapping (Samuel and Larraza, 2015), which may be advantageous. On the other hand, the two languages cause greater lexical competition (Marian & Spivey, 2003), which may impede successful L2-accented speech recognition. The competition between a bilinguals’ two languages is the oft-cited explanation, for example, as to why bilinguals underperform monolinguals in native-accented speech-in-noise tasks (Rogers et al., 2006).

To investigate the effect of bilingualism on L2-accented speech recognition, the current studies compare …

Lexical Properties Of Perceptual Errors Made By Younger And Older Adults Listening To Speech In Multitalker Babble, Hannah Blythe Vickery

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this error analysis was to analyze the lexical properties of misperceptions made when listening to speech in multitalker babble.

Methods: Twenty young adults with normal hearing (YNH), 20 older adults with normal hearing (ONH), and 22 older adults with hearing impairment (OHI) completed a speech-in-babble task. Participants were asked to repeat the final word in 25 high and 25 low context sentences. On each trial, participants either responded with the correct target word, a misperception error, or skipped the trial response. Misperceptions were compiled and analyzed according to their lexical properties.

Results: Results of this study …

Measuring Speech Perception In Children With Speech Sound Disorders Using The Wide Range Acoustic Accuracy Scale, Briel Francis Garner

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to measure the speech perception of children with speech sound disorders and compare it to that of adults and typically developing children. A secondary purpose was to determine if an adaptive-tracking tool, the Wide Range Acoustic Accuracy Scale (WRAAS) equalized task demands across participants independent of perceptual ability. The participants included 31 adults, 15 typically developing children, and 15 children with speech sound disorders. Children with speech sound disorders all had difficulty producing /r/ correctly. Each participant completed perceptual testing discriminating differences in three syllable contrast pairs: /bÉ‘/-/wÉ‘/, /dÉ‘/-/gÉ‘/, and /rÉ‘/-/wÉ‘/. Results indicated that …

Encoding And Perception Of Voicing And Aspiration In Native And Non-Native Listeners In Quiet And In Background Noise, Reethee Antony

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The perception and encoding of voice cues in consonants have been well studied, whereas there has been relatively little research on aspiration. The current study examined the encoding and perception of aspiration and voicing in Hindi, American English, and Tamil listeners when relevant cues were and were not degraded by noise. This study is novel because of the inclusion of aspiration, the language groups, inclusion of noise masking, and inclusion of auditory evoked potentials (in addition to behavioral testing).

The first aim was to determine whether language groups for whom aspiration and/or voicing is phonemically contrastive show better perception and …

Testing The Common-Mechanisms Theory Of False Hearing And False Memory: The Roles Of Executive Functioning And Inhibitory Control, Eric Failes

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies have shown that older adults are more susceptible to context-based misperceptions in hearing than are younger adults, a phenomenon that has been referred to as false hearing (Rogers et al., 2012; Sommers et al., 2015). The authors of these studies have noted similarities between false hearing and false memories (Jacoby et al., 2005), suggesting that the two phenomena may arise from similar cognitive mechanisms. The present dissertation project investigated similarities between false hearing and false memories. In Experiment 1, I directly compared susceptibility to false hearing and false memories in younger and older adults. I then investigated two …

Individual Auditory Categorization Abilities Are Shaped By Intrinsic And Experience-Driven Neural Factors, Kelsey Mankel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To make sense of the auditory world, listeners must organize diverse, continuously varying sounds into meaningful perceptual categories. The auditory categorization process is believed to be a foundational skill for language development and speech perception. Despite decades of behavioral research, neuroscientific evidence is only beginning to uncover where, when, and how auditory categories arise in the brain. Although it has been proposed that categorical perception is shaped by both innate (nature) and experience-driven (nurture) factors, it is unclear how these features manifest neurally at the individual level. In the first study of this dissertation, we recorded multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG) in …

The Influence Of Socioindexical Information On The Speech Perception-Production Link: Evidence From A Shadowing Task, Kyler B. Laycock

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The body of work on speech perception demonstrates the ability of listeners to utilize both visual and acoustic information in their processing of a given speech signal. More recent studies have established that listeners are sensitive to cues in both these modalities which inform their perception of a speaker's identity in parallel with the linguistic message, but the relationship between social information in perception and production together is unclear. This study reports the results of an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that expectations about a speakers identity is able to influence a listener's perception and production of speech in …

Examining The Effects Of Background Noise On Contextualized Word Learning, Caitlin Alyssa Ross

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Despite redundancy in the acoustic speech signal, both children and adults demonstrate difficulty listening and learning in noise. Research has shown that the acoustic parameters of classrooms and common study places, such as libraries and coffee shops, are often exposing students daily to unhealthy levels of background noise and distraction as they attempt to access and retain new information. While younger children may encounter new words via deliberate instruction in a classroom setting, older students are more likely to access new vocabulary indirectly via reading or self-study in noisy environments often of their own choosing. In both scenarios, accurate perception …