bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Difficulty with selective listening in Autism spectrum disorder
Authors: Kashino Makio , Lin I-Fan
Published: November 2016

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulty with selective listening in the presence of multiple sounds despite their normal puretone thresholds. We have been conducting a series of studies to uncover neural bases for such difficulty in ASD adults without intellectual disability. First, we compared basic auditory functions between ASD and neurotypical (NT) groups, and found that (1) sensitivities to interaural time and level differences were lower in ASD than NT, and (2) a sub-group of ASD showed low sensitivity to temporal fine structure of acoustic waveforms. These findings suggest deficits in auditory processing in the brainstem of ASD. Second, we compared target detection thresholds between the two groups in the presence of distractors having little energetic masking on the target. Detection performance was dependent on the spectrotemporal coherence of target and distractor components in NT, whereas no such difference was observed in ASD, suggesting that ASD may lack automatic grouping across frequency channels. Additionally, we have observed significant differences between the two groups in behavioral, perceptual, autonomic, and brain responses to speech and/or non-speech stimuli. Taken together, difficulty with selective listening in ASD may involve several different mechanisms in both cortical and sub-cortical neural sites.
Non-contact source for nonlinear acoustics for crack detection
Authors: Le Bas Pierre-yves , Ulrich T. J. , Remillieux Marcel , Anderson Brian E. , Pieczonka Lucasz
Published: November 2016

Over the last decades, nonlinear acoustic techniques have been developed to detect mechanical damage in solids. They have been proven to be far more sensitive to early damage than standard linear acoustic techniques. Unfortunately, they often require high amplitude waves to propagate within the sample. To be practical in industrial applications, signals have to be generated without contact. Here, we will present a novel non contact acoustic source that can produce higher amplitude than standard transducers and how it can be used to image defects into a carbon fiber reinforce plastic plate damaged by an impact. We will show that we can not only image cracks but also separate two overlapping defects according to their orientation. [This work was supported by the US Department of Energy via the used fuel disposition campaign of the nuclear energy program.]
Modelling and experimental mapping of the ultrasound pressure field generated from focused ultrasonic transducers using fiber optic acoustic sensors
Authors: Chen Songmao , Sabato Alessandro , Niezrecki Christopher , Avitabile Peter
Published: November 2016

The dynamic focused ultrasound radiation force has been recently used for excitation of structures with sizes ranging from micro to macro scale having a frequency bandwidth between tens of Hertz and up to 100 kHz. Therefore it can potentially be used as an alternative non-contact excitation method for conventional contact type excitations such as modal impact hammer or shaker excitations for experimental modal analysis. However, the dynamic focused ultrasound radiation force remains to be quantified and calibrated. In this paper, we present the results of numerically modeling and experimentally mapping the pressure field generated by a focused ultrasonic transducer (UT) with a radiating diameter of 50 mm and center frequency of 359 kHz. In the simulation, an acoustic model is created using the Rayleigh Integral and the boundary element method. For the experimental testing, a precision microphone and a fiber optic acoustic sensor are used to map the pressure field generated from the UT driven by double sideband suppressed carrier amplitude modulation signals. This novel fiber optic sensor is custom developed with a sensing element having a diameter of Φ125 μm, enabling high spatial resolution measurement. The simulation and experimental results are compared and are shown to have good agreement.
Mapping the functional pathways to speech intelligibility using neuroimaging techniques: A study of incremental speech perception
Authors: Byers Emily , Murdock Jaimie
Published: November 2016

Speech perception involves a complex feedforward/feedback process of decoding bottom-up auditory input while utilizing top-down cognitive/linguistic knowledge to map stored word forms onto incoming acoustic waves (Kinchla & Wolfe, 1979; Sloos & McKeown, 2015). Speech perception in the brain is believed to occur as a result of cortical spreading from the core of the auditory cortex (and peripheral areas), diffusing into non-speech-specific areas of the brain responsible for binding information and memory retrieval. The current study traces the functional pathways between regions associated with speech perception using a combination of fMRI and EEG imaging. Our principle aim is to determine how normal functional connectivity between language-processing areas differs from speech perception where speech ranges from unintelligible (e.g., English phonetic non-word sentences) to intelligible with spontaneous disruptions (code-switched utterances) up to fully intelligible speech. Testing disruption of speech intelligibility in healthy adults using naturally-occurring stimuli recreates the type of breakdown in intelligibility experienced by patients with language disorders as well as typically aging adults. Preliminary results indicate that spontaneous disruption of speech intelligibility due to mixed-language utterances differs from traditional information-masking stimuli both in reaction time to the stimulus change and in the amount of time required to resume online speech processing.
Online testing for assessing speech intelligibility
Authors: Peelle Jonathan E. , Zhang Tracy , Patel Nisha , Rogers Chad S. , Van Engen Kristin J.
Published: November 2016

The use of online testing in the behavioral sciences is increasing due to the potential for lower cost and faster completion than traditional in-person laboratory testing. Online testing presents a special challenge for speech research due to the variety of listeners’ acoustic environments. For example, listeners may use headphones or speakers of various types, complete the task in different levels of background noise, or vary in their hearing abilities. Here we presented spoken sentences in speech-shaped noise to participants from the United States recruited online using Amazon Mechanical Turk at SNRs of -2, -5, and -8 dB (n≥50 per SNR). We compared these online results to normative data collected using these same sentences in the lab (SNR of -5 dB; n = 30). Preliminary results suggest a reasonable correspondence between average intelligibility scores for individual sentences presented using the two methods (Spearman rho = 0.79). Standard deviations suggest greater variability in the online responses (average SD across sentences = 1.24) relative to the lab responses (average SD = 0.86). We conclude that despite increased variability, online testing can provide reasonable ratings of intelligibility and in many circumstances is a feasible method to supplement or replace laboratory testing.
Isolating the informational component of speech-on-speech masking
Authors: Schoof Tim , Calcus Axelle , Rosen Stuart , Shinn-Cunningham Barbara , Souza Pamela
Published: November 2016

Speech perception in the presence of a competing talker involves both energetic (EM) and informational masking (IM). This study aimed to isolate the informational component of speech-on-speech masking. EM can be eliminated by presenting the target and masker to opposite ears (i.e., dichotically). However, this also dramatically reduces the effects of IM by providing listeners with lateralization cues. Previous research using tonal sequences has shown that IM can be isolated by presenting the target and masker dichotically while rapidly switching the two streams across the ears. The question remains whether this technique can also be used for speech materials. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured for sentences produced by a female talker in the presence of a competing male talker under three conditions: diotic, dichotic, and switching. In the switching condition, target and masker were presented dichotically, but their lateralization was switched after every word in the target sentence. Preliminary data suggests that SRTs for the switching condition are higher than for the dichotic condition but lower than for the diotic condition. This suggests that, contrary to findings for tonal sequences, rapidly switching the target and masker speech across the ears does not fully reintroduce IM. [Work supported by NIH.]
Separation and integration of sound sources in auditory processing
Authors: Horigome Mio , Kakehi Kazuhiko
Published: November 2016

Some perceptual experiments were conducted to elucidate sound source separation processing in speech perception. The phenomenon of phonemic restoration was tested if it occurs in dichotic listening. An original speech is Japanese /VCV/, the stimulus is made by manipulating the /VCV/ as was replaced the consonant part with noise. The duration of replacement was varied at six levels: 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 ms. There were two hearing modes: in one case, the monaural stimulus was presented to both the ear, and in the other case, the speech part of the stimulus was presented to an ear and the noise part to the opposite ear simultaneously. Thirty subjects in the age of twenties participate the listening test. The results show that phonemic restoration effect is clearly observed in both hearing modes. The rate of restoration is 92%, and 95% even in dichotic listening. There was no feature of speech in the noise has no relation with speech sound. Moreover, the direction of the noise sound was opposite to that of speech sound source, different in 180 degree. Even though the two sound signal are somehow integrated to hear restored speech.
Estimation of binaural speech intelligibility based on the better ear model
Authors: Taira Kazuya , Kobayashi Yosuke , Kondo Kazuhiro
Published: November 2016

When intelligibility is measured, objective estimation is more convenient than subjective. However, most objective estimation methods estimate monaural intelligibility using monaural signals. Therefore, it is necessary to estimate binaural intelligibility using binaural signals in order to take into account that a person listens using two ears. We evaluated an intelligibility estimation method using the Better Ear Model which selects better value out of the left and right feature values, and found that high estimation accuracy is possible. Accordingly, we proposed and evaluated an extension to this model which divides the signal into critical frequency bands, and takes the better value between left and right channel in each band (Band-Selection Better Ear Model). Furthermore, we tried estimation using machine learning in addition to regression analysis which we applied previously. Neural network and support vector machine were used here. Comparison between the Better Ear Model and the Band-Selection Better Ear Model showed no significant differences in the estimation accuracy. Also, the introduction of machine learning yielded a higher accuracy than that of regression analysis in a closed test. Correlation between subjective and estimated intelligibility increased by 0.1 or more. So far, mixed results are seen in the open test.
Event-related potential responses reveal simultaneous processing across multiple levels of representation in spoken word recognition
Authors: Folk Emma C. , Toscano Joseph C.
Published: November 2016

A controversial issue in spoken language comprehension concerns whether different sources of information are encapsulated from each other. Do listeners finish processing lower-level information (e.g., encoding acoustic differences) before beginning higher-level processing (e.g., determining the meaning of a word or its grammatical status)? We addressed these questions by examining the time-course of processing using an event-related potential experiment with a component-independent design. Listeners heard voiced/voiceless minimal pairs differing in (1) lexical status, (2) syntactic class (noun/verb distinctions), and (3) semantic content (animate/inanimate distinctions). For each voiced stimulus in a given condition (e.g., lexical status pair TUB/tup), there was a corresponding pair with a voiceless ending (tob/TOP). Stimuli were cross-spliced, allowing us to control for phonological and acoustic differences and examine higher-level effects independently of them. Widespread lexical status effects are observed shortly after the cross-splicing point (i.e., the time when the lexical properties of the word can first be determined) and persist for an extended time. Moreover, there is considerable overlap in the times during which both lexical status and semantic content effects are observed. These results suggest that listeners multiple types of linguistic representations are active simultaneously during spoken word recognition, consistent with parallel processing models.
Prediction of listener perception of reduced, voice stop consonant simulations based on patterns of formant deflections
Authors: Willi Megan , Story Brad
Published: November 2016

Previous research on stop consonants found that less than 60 percent of the stops sampled from a speech corpus contained a clearly defined period of silence or prevoicing prior to the plosive release [Crystal & House, JASA, 1988]. How listeners perceive a reduced form of stop consonants without these cues is not well understood. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate whether recasting typical formant transitions into a measure called a “relative formant deflection pattern” provides a means of predicting listeners’ perceptions of approximant-like, voiced stop consonant variants. A computational model of speech production, in which consonant constriction location was varied along the length of the vocal tract, was used to generate place continua of approximate-like, voiced stop consonants imposed on a vowel-to-vowel transition. Stimuli were presented to listeners in three conditions: 1) normal simulated speech, 2) sinewave speech in which three tones replicated the time course of the F1, F2, and F3 contours in the simulated samples, and 3) sinewave speech in which three tones were present, but selected combinations of F1, F2, and F3 were set to a flat contour. Perceptual responses will be compared to the predictions based on relative formant deflection patterns across conditions.
Cue shifting bias between acoustically correlated cues
Authors: Yang Meng
Published: November 2016

Acoustic cues signaling the same phonetic contrast are weighted differently by listeners in sound categorization. From the body of research on perceptual cue weighting, two major views have emerged. On one hand, research has shown that secondary cue weights depend on the distributional informativeness of cues. On the other hand, cues that enhance the percept of other cues have been demonstrated to get a “boost” in cue weight. The current study extends these theoretical claims to cue shifting using breathiness and pitch as cues in a novel sound categorization paradigm that induces changes in cue weights. Two factors affecting cue shifting in adult listeners were tested: distributional learning and perceptual enhancement. While a change in cue distinctiveness did cause listeners to redistribute cue weights to favour the more distinctive cue, cue shifting was not equal in all conditions. The shift was facilitated when the task allowed listeners to make use of the enhancing quality of the two cues. This finding cannot be explained by the distributional learning account. Additionally, listeners found it easier to shift cue weight from pitch onto breathiness than from breathiness onto pitch. This is problematic for both the distributional learning theory and the auditory enhancement theory.
How listeners recognise vowel sounds under highpass or lowpass filtering of vowel-specific frequency ranges
Authors: Maurer Dieter , Kathiresan Thayabaran , Suter Heidy , Dellwo Volker
Published: November 2016

The present paper reports findings of two experiments on filtered sounds of the Standard German vowels /i-y-e-ø-ɛ-a-o-u/ produced by a female speaker at two fundamental frequencies fo = 220 Hz and 659 Hz and a male speaker at fo = 131 Hz and 523 Hz. High-pitched sounds were included in order to account for a possible impact of the fo level on the perception of filtered vowel sounds. In the first experiment, the frequency region of the first formant of the sounds was highpass filtered, and in the second experiment, the frequency region of the second formant of the sounds was lowpass filtered. Vowel recognition of all sounds was investigated in a listening test. Results revealed shifts in the perceived vowel quality which varied across (i) vowel categories, (ii) fo, and (iii) filter cutoff frequencies. Details of the filter parameters and of the perceived vowel quality shifts are given in the paper and implications for the relationship between acoustic cues and vowel recognition are discussed.
Affricate-fricative perception in Korean listeners: Evidence for universal and language specific biases
Authors: Nam Youngja , Polka Linda
Published: November 2016

Although language experience has a profound impact on phonetic perception, there is increasing evidence that phonetic perception is also shaped by universal biases which can be revealed as asymmetries in discrimination performance. In the present study, we explore potential perceptual asymmetries in adult Korean perception of four English affricate-fricative contrasts. Korean adults completed a native-language assimilation task and a category-based AX discrimination task with the phonemic contrast /tʃa-sa/ and non-phonemic contrasts /tʃa-ʃa/, /dʒa-za/ and /dʒa-ʒa/. Both voiceless contrasts—/tʃa-sa/ and /tʃa-ʃa/—were assimilated to distinct Korean affricate and fricative categories and were discriminated very well (>90%); performance revealed no perceptual asymmetries. Both voiced contrasts—/dʒa-za/ and /dʒa-ʒa/—were assimilated to the same Korean affricate category (/tʃa/) and were poorly discriminated (63-65%); performance was asymmetric on different pairs for both contrasts (fricative-affricate pairs>affricate-fricative pairs) and on same pairs for /dʒa-ʒa/ (fricative-fricative pairs>affricate-affricate pairs). These findings, and prior research, show that asymmetrical performance on different pairs is highly uniform and predicted by phone type, pointing to a possible universal bias favoring sharp amplitude onsets. However, asymmetries in same pair performance are predicted by language categorization and thus appear to be shaped by language-specific experience.
Cross-linguistic differences in articulatory timing lag in consonant cluster perception
Authors: Kwon Harim , Chitoran Ioana , Pouplier Marianne , Lentz Tom , Hoole Philip
Published: November 2016

Cross-language research on consonant cluster production has shown that consonant clusters in different languages are produced with different degrees of articulatory timing lags. The present study examines perceptual sensitivity to these cross-linguistic timing differences in consonant clusters. Native German listeners were tested on an AXB similarity judgment test using stimuli including consonant clusters produced by German and Georgian speakers. (German consonant clusters are produced with relatively shorter lag between two consonants than Georgian ones.) Stimuli were /bla, gla, gna/ syllables recorded along with articulatory (EMA) data. Short lag German tokens and long lag Georgian tokens were selected as A and B, with Xs of varying degrees of lag chosen from either Georgian or German recordings. Results showed that German listeners are sensitive to the cross-linguistic differences in articulatory timing lag: when the timing lag of X was closer to A, participants were more likely to choose A. Moreover, listeners’ sensitivity was influenced by the types of clusters: listeners were more sensitive in /bla/ than they were in /gla/ and in /gna/. The effects on the similarity judgment of different measures of articulatory lag, of vocalic releases produced within clusters, and of other sub-phonemic details were investigated. Overall, the results show that the lag differences are salient to German listeners while German and Georgian clusters can differ in a number of respects.
Identification of stop consonants produced by an acoustically-driven model of a child-like vocal tract
Authors: Story Brad H. , Bunton Kate
Published: November 2016

A model of a child-like vocal tract has been developed such that the deformation patterns superimposed on a vowel substrate to generate coarticulated consonants are specified by a time-varying set of directional shifts in the first three resonance frequencies. These deflection patterns are denoted as a combination of three numbers each of which can vary between -1 and 1; a negative value implies a downward shift in a resonance frequency whereas an upward shift results for positive value. For example, a “bilabial” consonant specified as [-1,-1,-1] would be transformed via calculations of acoustic sensitivity functions to a time-varying vocal tract shape that presents the expected constriction at the lips, but also modifies other parts of the vocal tract that may be necessary for producing the appropriate formant transitions into and out of the consonant. Using this model, three sets of 30 VCV utterances were generated in which the values of deflection patterns were set to produce vocal tract shapes that hypothetically produce the stop consonants /b/, /d/, and /g/ embedded in three different vowel-vowel contexts. A perceptual experiment was performed to test their identification by listeners. [Work supported by NIH R01-DC011275 and NSF BCS-1145011.]
Mapping vowel categories at high fundamental frequencies using multidimensional scaling of cochlea-scaled spectra
Authors: Friedrichs Daniel , Rosen Stuart , Iverson Paul , Maurer Dieter , Dellwo Volker
Published: November 2016

Recent studies have shown that accurate vowel category perception can be maintained at fundamental frequencies (fo) up to at least 880 Hz. In such cases, the typical first formant frequency (F1) of most vowels is exceeded by fo and the vocal tract transfer function is to a high degree undersampled. It seems therefore unlikely that common formant patterns are the main acoustic features used by listeners to recognize vowels at high fos. Here, we present results from multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses calculated by averaging cochlea-scaled spectra across multiple steady-state vowels (N = 324; all 250 ms) produced by a female native German speaker at nine fos within a range of 220-880 Hz. All vowels (/i, y, e, ø, ɛ, a, o, u/) were recognized accurately by listeners (N = 20) in a previous study [Friedrichs et al., The phonological function of vowels is maintained at fundamental frequencies up to 880 Hz, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138, EL36-EL42 (2015)]. MDS reveals that with increasing fo, the vowel height dimension partially collapses, but the front/back distinction expands, thus allowing the vowels to be distinguished. This indicates that the perceptual space is reorganized and vowel height and frontness are being combined in a correlated way at higher fos.
Coronal stop deletion in Hawai'i English
Authors: Hooshiar Kavon , Drager Katie , Copeland Cassidy
Published: November 2016

Coronal Stop Deletion (CSD) is believed to be constrained by the phonological environment and the word’s morphological make-up (i.e., monomorphemic, semi-weak past tense, regular past tense) (Guy 1991; Hazen 2011). In this talk, we present results from an analysis of CSD in the speech of four speakers of Hawai'i English. In addition to using a traditional approach (i.e., auditory analysis of CSD in word-final position), we also analyzed CSD in non-final position (e.g., followed by plural -s) and conducted acoustic phonetic analysis of /t/ in tokens where it was realized. The results demonstrate highly significant effects of environment. Additionally, there is no effect of morpheme type; instead, the results provide evidence that deletion is favored in words with a greater number of morphemes, regardless of whether the coronal stop is found in the stem or the affix. Additionally, the acoustic analysis suggests that the effect of following environment is acoustically gradient: tokens followed by a voiceless, non-alveolar consonant (i.e., the environment that most strongly disfavors deletion in our data) are most likely to be realized with complete occlusion in the vocal tract. Implications for models of speech production are discussed.
Inferring velum movements from acoustic features
Authors: Zhang Hong
Published: November 2016

Although acoustical methods have been widely used in the literature on nasality, a direct link between the acoustic features and velum movements during speech production is yet to be established. In this study, we propose a model through which the vertical movements of the velum are inferred from an acoustic feature set. An X-ray Microbeam data set collected at University of Tokyo is used for the modeling. The data recorded the vertical movements of the velum of 11 American English speakers saying both isolated words and sentences. Velum positions are traced by a metal pallet placed on top of the velum. 40 MFCC (Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient) features are extracted from the accompanying acoustic signal at each time frame. MFCC features of five frames to both sides of the current frame, together with the current frame, consist of the 440-dimensional feature vector for predicting the velum position of the current frame. The feature vectors are then fitted to a lasso regression model. The inferred velum movements in the validation set are a good fit to the actual observation as judged by the high accuracy in identifying locations of peaks and valleys, and predicting the overall contour shape of the velum trajectory.
Effect of tongue position in the simplified vocal tract model of sibilant fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/
Authors: Yoshinaga Tsukasa , Nozaki Kazunori , Wada Shigeo
Published: November 2016

In this study, a simplified vocal tract model which reproduces both sibilant fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ is proposed to investigate the effect of tongue position on flow and sound generation in the vocal tract. The simplified model consists of a tongue with sibilant groove and upper and lower teeth in a rectangular channel. Dimensions of the model were determined based on CT images of the subject pronouncing sibilant /s/. The sound and flow fluctuation generated by the model were measured with a microphone and a hot-wire anemometer, respectively. In addition, the large-eddy simulation was conducted to reveal the characteristics of sound source generated by the turbulent flow in the vocal tract. The acoustic measurement showed that the backward shift of the tongue increased the spectral slope value, indicating that the acoustic characteristics were changed from /s/ to /ʃ/. The large-eddy simulation showed that the position of sound source downstream of teeth was shifted backward and the magnitude of the sound source was decreased by shifting the tongue backward. These results indicate that both the resonance characteristics and the position of the sound source were changed by shifting the tongue which causes the difference in acoustic characteristics between /s/ and /ʃ/.
Articulatory and acoustic realization of French and German /R/
Authors: Gendrot Cedric , Kuhnert Barbara , Demolin Didier
Published: November 2016

French uvular /ʁ/ is usually considered as problematic due to its variability, especially in positions such as word initial and word final. In this study, an articulatory (EMA) and aerodynamic experiment allowed us to determine its major axes of variation. We show that the degree of constriction between the tongue and the palate is related to the voicing of the consonant and we validate the use of a harmonic-to-noise ratio for the measurement of variation of /ʁ/. Aerodynamic data also show that the variation of Nasal Airflow is not significant but a ratio between Oral Airflow and Intra-Oral Pressure significantly varies according to the different realizations of /ʁ/. Subglottic Pressure only plays a significant role in specific cases. These results allow us to propose a new acoustic measurement for the variation in uvular /ʁ/ production. An acoustic study is then presented on large corpora of continuous speech, so as to test the variability of French /ʁ/ in terms of the aforementioned results, and we show the importance of prosodic factors. Finally, a parallel with a German similar corpus of articulatory and acoustic data is drawn, we suggest that German /ʁ/ shows less variation than French /ʁ/ due to phonological reasons.
Articulatory setting as global coarticulation: Simulation, acoustics, and perception
Authors: Gick Bryan , Chiu Chenhao , Roewer-Despres Francois , Schellenberg Murray , Stavness Ian
Published: November 2016

Articulatory settings, language-specific default postures of the speech articulators, have been difficult to distinguish from segmental speech content [see Gick et al. 2004, Phonetica 61, 220-233]. The simplest construal of articulatory setting is as a constantly maintained set of tonic muscle activations that coarticulates globally with all segmental content. In his early Overlapping Innervation Wave theory, Joos [1948, Language Monogr. 23] postulated that all coarticulation can be understood as simple overlap, or superposition [Bizzi et al. 1991, Science 253, 287-291], of muscle activation patterns. The present paper describes an implementation of Joos’ proposals within a modular neuromuscular framework [see Gick & Stavness 2013, Front. Psych. 4, 977]. Results of a simulation and perception study will be reported in which muscle activations corresponding to English-like and French-like articulatory settings are simulated and superposed on activations for language-neutral vowels using the ArtiSynth biomechanical modeling toolset (www.artisynth.org). Simulated visible and acoustic outputs presented to perceivers familiar with both languages speak to the question of whether overlapping muscle activations generate outputs that look and sound language-appropriate to perceivers, testing a unified, context-independent model for both coarticulation and articulatory setting. [Research funded by NIH Grant DC-02717 and NSERC.]
Articulatory settings of English-French bilinguals reanalyzed by SS-ANOVA
Authors: Iguro Yuki , Wilson Ian , Villegas Julian
Published: November 2016

To improve the skill of speaking a second language (L2), one good way may be to be aware of the underlying tongue position for a language. We focused on such underlying position differences between English and French, particularly when pausing for a short time between speaking; something called inter-speech posture (ISP). In past research, Wilson and Gick investigated ISP between English and French spoken by bilinguals. In that research, bilinguals had distinct articulatory settings for each language, mostly in the lips. However, their tongue data was for only 4 points of articulatory settings: distance from the ultrasound probe to tongue root, tongue dorsum, tongue body, and tongue tip, but not overall shape. Furthermore, to measure tongue tip position, past research relied on the alveolar ridge, which is unclear to see: possibly making the results inaccurate for tongue tip. In this study, we analyzed the whole shape of the tongue and made models of them using SS-ANOVA in R so that we could compare the difference from past research using a different measurement method. Our results showed that bilinguals who are perceived as native in both languages have a different ISP in the posterior half of the tongue.
F3 variability in allophones of /l/: Acoustic-articulatory relations
Authors: Popescu Anisia
Published: November 2016

F3 is know to exhibit higher values in darker varieties of /l/. This contrast has been attributed to differences in closure fronting and front cavity configuration. In this paper we propose a possible alternative explanation for higher F3 in dark /l/, based on sensitivity functions. Both allophones have an apical gesture, but differ in their tongue dorsum gestures: clear /l/ has a raising and fronting gesture, while dark /l/ has postdorsum retraction towards the uvular region. We propose that the gestural composition of dark /l/ creates two constriction sites in the vocal tract that correspond to the two maxima of the F3 sensitivity function, thus resulting in higher values for dark /l/. To address these predictions we analyzed both acoustic and articulatory data from 6 speakers of the Wisconsin XRMB database. Articulatory strategies vary both inter and intra-speakers. High F3 values are obtained with both elevated tongue tip and retracted postdorsum, while low F3 values, have small values of postdorsum retraction. Overall results show that, despite inter-speaker variability in vocal tract shape and articulatory strategies, F3 is positively correlated with tongue dorsum retraction.
Gestural coordination and blending among liquid consonants and vowels in American English
Authors: Walker Rachel , Proctor Michael
Published: November 2016

In General American English (GAE), tense/lax vowel contrasts occur before syllables ending in /l/ (e.g., peel, pill), but not those ending in /ɹ/ (e.g., peer; no [i]/[ɪ] contrast). No such restrictions occur after a syllable-initial liquid consonant (e.g., lip, leap, rip, reap). This study investigates the hypothesis that these phonotactic asymmetries arise from the interaction of differences in gestural coordination between nuclear vowels and liquid consonants in syllable onset versus coda position (Browman & Goldstein 1995) and differences in blending parameter strength for GAE laterals versus rhotics. A study of speech production by four GAE speakers was conducted using real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Narayanan et al. 2004). Liquid consonants were produced in various vocalic environments and syllable positions (syllable-final, syllable-initial: word-initial and intervocalic). Analysis using a center of gravity metric defined by midsagittal lingual outlines points to greater articulatory stability in rhotics versus laterals across different vocalic contexts and less coarticulatory displacement of pre-lateral vowels than pre-rhotic vowels. Further analysis of spatial and temporal effects in the data will be used to test hypotheses about coordination of vowel and liquid consonant gestures in different syllable positions and their relation to phonotactic patterns. [Research supported by NIH and ARC.]
Modeling the effect of palate shape on the articulatory-acoustics mapping
Authors: Bakst Sarah , Johnson Keith
Published: November 2016

Previous research [Brunner et al. (2009, JASA 125(6), 3936-3949) and Bakst & Lin (ICPhS 2015)] shows that articulatory variability is reduced for people with flatter palates. Brunner et al. (2009) hypothesized that this is because the mapping between articulation and acoustics is more linear for flatter than for more domed palates; in order to maintain similar levels of acoustic consistency, people with flatter palates must be more articulatorily precise than people with more domed palates. A revised version of the Maeda synthesizer was used to model how vocal tract anatomy influences the mapping of articulation onto acoustics, using American English /r/ as a test case. A retroflex-able tongue tip was added to the synthesizer. Two additional palate shapes were also added to the synthesizer, and a script was used to search the articulatory-acoustic space for vocal tract configurations that resulted in a low F3 (the hallmark acoustic cue for /r/) for each palate. Palate shape influences not only the overall sensitivity of the articulatory-acoustic mapping, but also the effect of each individual articulatory parameter on F3.
Acoustic effects of phonetic conditions and laryngeal specification on phonation in English voiceless obstruents
Authors: Davidson Lisa
Published: November 2016

A detailed acoustic analysis of phonation in voiceless obstruents in American English (AE) is presented to investigate potential acoustic outcomes of the laryngeal coordination relationships that have been reported in the literature. The current study examines the realization of phonation in voiceless obstruents in a corpus of read speech (37 AE speakers). Similar to phonation in voiced obstruents (Davidson 2016), linguistic factors such as phrase and word position, stress, and the preceding phoneme condition the presence and degree of phonation during the constriction period of stops and fricatives. The amount of phonation present is further analyzed by characterizing where in the constriction interval phonation appears. Carryover phonation (or “bleed”) from a preceding sonorant is most common for stops, while a “trough” pattern (phonation that dies out and then begins again before the end of the closure) is more prevalent for fricatives. The linguistic conditioning factors, and the overall lower rate of partial voicing and proportion of phonation in the constriction as compared to voiced obstruents, illustrate the acoustic and aerodynamic consequences of the various laryngeal coordination patterns that have been proposed for English voiceless obstruents in different prosodic environments.
Performance and function meet structure: A white matter brain connection tuned for motor speech control
Authors: Sidtis John J. , Mubeen Muhammad A. , Asaei Ali , Ardekani Babak , Sidtis Diana
Published: November 2016

Despite bilateral brain activation during speech tasks, we have shown that performance is predicted by a blood flow increase in the left inferior frontal region and decrease in the right caudate, consistent with classic lesion studies. This study characterized the structural connections between these brain areas using diffusion tensor imaging and examined their relationships with measures of motor speech control. Probabilistic tractography estimated the connection strength between these two brain structures, both ipsilaterally and contralaterally, in 25 normal subjects. Speech was recorded at a separate evaluation. The majority of fiber connections were ipsilateral, but contralateral connections were also present. The relative connection strength between the right caudate and the left inferior frontal region was significantly associated with acoustic measures of stability for frequency (correlations for the repetition of /pa/ = 0.46; /ta/ = 0.5; /ka/ = 0.46; /pataka/ = 0.52) and amplitude (/pa/ = 0.43; /ta/ = 0.5; /ka/ = 0.49; /pataka/ = 0.49), echoing the predictive value of blood flow in these regions during speech. This was not observed for other connections. These results suggest that white matter connections share functional specialization with the structures they connect in the motor-speech system.
On the link between the ability to reproduce rhythm and reading speed: Effects of visual grouping marks
Authors: Rossier-Bisaillon Antonin , Boucher Victor
Published: November 2016

Studies have revealed a link between a deficient ability to reproduce rhythm and dyslexia. Moreover, a normal ability to reproduce rhythm has been shown to correlate with reading speed. Some associate these findings to effects of neural oscillations and a visual parsing of text input (Vidyasagar, 2013). The present study aimed to clarify the properties of the visual stimuli that support a correlation between rhythm reproduction and reading speed. The experiments were partly based on Tierney and Kraus (2014). Thirty participants were asked to reproduce heard regular (2 beats/sec) and irregular (1-3 beats/sec) rhythms by tapping on a keyboard. Then, the participants had to read out loud, at a fast rate, visually displayed sequences of words and non-words. The sequences contained either no spaces between items (baseline condition) or spaces marking regular and irregular groups. Mean reading speeds were calculated on accurately decoded sequences. Among the significant findings, strong correlations were observed between mean reading speeds of texts containing spaces and the reproduction of certain rhythm patterns. However, no significant correlations appeared for text where there were no spaces separating words and non-words. This supports the view that the ability to reproduce rhythm can link to a visual parsing.
Tone sequences in lexical processing of Beijing Mandarin
Authors: Lin Isabelle
Published: November 2016

Previous research on the role of tone information in lexical access in Mandarin Chinese has focused on monosyllabic words. Using corpus data, we show that tone is more informative on Mandarin disyllables than monosyllables. Next, we investigate the role of tone sequences in disambiguating two segmentally identical disyllabic word candidates that differed only in tone. Using a priming paradigm, we show that tone frequency biases lexical decisions. Listeners were presented with a disyllabic sequence that is tonally ambiguous between two lexical entries. When word frequency and tone frequency did not favour the same candidate, a tonally-matched prime reduced the likelihood of picking the candidate with the matching tone. Preliminary results suggest that listeners are sensitive to the overall likelihood of encountering a given sequence of tones in running speech, instead of just tone sequences within disyllabic words.
Worse than the dentist: Effects of simultaneous acoustic and somatosensory feedback degradation on speech
Authors: Pollack Elliot A. , Rowley Mary C. , Casserly Elizabeth D.
Published: November 2016

Speakers use their sensory feedback to monitor real-time speech production; when unexpected changes to that feedback occur, they alter their articulation in immediate, perturbation-specific ways. However, it is not currently known how the feedback from different sensory systems is integrated across contexts. This study varied the reliability of feedback in the auditory and somatosensory domains and examined vowel acoustic phonetics for changes as a result of the manipulation. Acoustic feedback was degraded via eight-channel real-time cochlear implant simulation, while an over-the-counter oral anesthetic (benzocaine) was applied to speakers’ tongues and lips to degrade somatosensory feedback. Speakers (N = 18) produced 139 isolated English words under both baseline and feedback-degraded conditions. F1 and F2 measurements were taken from stressed tokens of eight vowels [i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ʌ, ʊ, u]. Significant differences in speakers’ responses to feedback degradation were observed both across vowels and across individuals. [u]-fronting was the most consistent response observed, along with isolated classes of vowels (commonly, front or back) being hyper- or hypo-articulated. The variability suggests that the speech motor control system lacks a single, automatic consequence for global feedback degradation.
Acoustic modification across speaking modes in English and Korean
Authors: Kim Yunjung , Chung Hyunju
Published: November 2016

Previous studies have reported temporal and spectral modification of acoustic signals of speech according to varying speaking modes (i.e. clear, loud speech) in several languages (Krause & Braida, 2004; Lam & Tjaden, 2015). Interestingly, some acoustic characteristics such as vowel contrasts, inferred from the size of the corner vowel space, have been discussed to exhibit common, equivalent change between languages despite the different inventory sizes (Smiljanic & Bradlow, 2005). The current study, as an expansion of this line of research, seeks to examine the effect of native language on selected acoustic measures when speakers voluntarily switch speaking modes among conversational, clear, and slow speech. 24 female adults (12 English-speaking, 12 Korean-speaking) were asked to read CVCV structures in the three aforementioned conditions. English and Korean were chosen mainly because of their differences in vowel and stop inventories. Vowel duration, formant structure (F1-F2), and VOT were measured from the target syllable (CVCV), while intensity and F0 were analyzed for the entire utterance to extend the observations of the non-segmental aspects of speaking modification. Findings are expected to reflect both language-independent and -dependent effects as well as to call for the need to consider the given language in behavioral management of diverse speech disorders.
Fricatives in conversational vs. read speech in mid-Western American English
Authors: Brenner Daniel , Kharlamov Viktor , Tucker Benjamin V.
Published: November 2016

The present study examines the acoustic characteristics of fricatives across two corpora from mid-Western American English. Our goal is to determine (i) the range of acoustic variation in the production of fricatives in conversational vs. read speech, and (ii) the type and extent of individual variation schemes demonstrated by the speakers. The study surveys over 100,000 fricative tokens from the conversational Buckeye Corpus (Pitt et al. 2005) and the read speech TIMIT Corpus (Zue and Seneff 1988). We test an extensive list of acoustic measures compiled on the basis of prior work with laboratory data (incl. duration, center of gravity, skew, kurtosis, peak power, etc.) and explore the implications of the findings for our understanding of the group and individual patterning of speech production processes across the two different speech styles.
Effects of phonetic reduction and regional variation on lexical access
Authors: Dossey Ellen , Clopper Cynthia G.
Published: November 2016

This study investigates the impact of acoustic variability on speech processing using a cross-modal priming experiment. Participants heard an audio prime consisting of a single lexical item followed by a printed word on the computer screen and were asked to indicate whether or not the word they heard was the same as the word on the screen. Auditory primes were balanced for linguistic factors that contribute to phonetic reduction, including lexical neighborhood density and whether the token was the first or second mention of the word in the larger context from which it was extracted. Primes were also balanced for social factors which contribute to phonetic variation, including regional dialect. To analyze the effect of these factors on speech processing, reaction times to matching prime-target pairs were analyzed. The results show that reaction times for Midland listeners were significantly faster following Midland primes than Northern primes, suggesting a native dialect benefit. However, the effect of dialect was smaller for words with a lower neighborhood density and for second mention primes relative to first mention primes. Together, these results suggest that dialect variation may have a smaller impact on speech processing in contexts that favor phonetic reduction.
Bi-dialectal homophone effects in Kansai Japanese lexical decision tasks
Authors: Tsai Karen , Lester Nicholas , del Prado Martín Fermín M.
Published: November 2016

Many Japanese varieties, including Tokyo Japanese, have lexical pitch accent patterns that can result in homophones that vary across dialects, such as ame HL 'rain (Tokyo)' and ame LH 'candy (Tokyo), rain (Kansai)'. Experimental research on lexical pitch accent in Japanese has been limited, however, to Tokyo Japanese and accentless varieties (Utsugi, Koizumi & Mazuka, 2011). This study explores homophone effects of minimal accent pairs for speakers of Kansai Japanese, a dialect that, unlike Tokyo Japanese, has base tone melodies, HL or LHL (Haraguchi, 1977), in addition to lexical pitch accent. Unlike previous studies on processing effects of Japanese homophones (Cutler & Otake, 1999; Minematsu & Hirose, 1995) that focus on visual recognition in Tokyo Japanese (Hino, Kusunose, Lupker & Jared, 2013; Sekiguchi, 2006), the current experiment measures reaction times to auditory stimuli in a lexical decision task comparing Tokyo Japanese with Kansai Japanese, whose speakers are typically bi-dialectal speakers of Tokyo Japanese as well. Results of the study will shed light on the issue of how pitch accent affects spoken word recognition in two different pitch accent varieties of Japanese.