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Contingent categorization in speech perception
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Contingent categorization in speech perception

Keith S Apfelbaum, Natasha Bullock-Rest, Ariane E Rhone, Allard Jongman and Bob McMurray
Language, cognition and neuroscience, Vol.29(9), pp.1070-1082
2014
DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2013.824995
PMCID: PMC4141128
PMID: 25157376
url
http://hdl.handle.net/1808/24554View
Open Access

Abstract

The speech signal is notoriously variable, with the same phoneme realized differently depending on factors like talker and phonetic context. Variance in the speech signal has led to a proliferation of theories of how listeners recognize speech. A promising approach, supported by computational modeling studies, is contingent categorization, wherein incoming acoustic cues are computed relative to expectations. We tested contingent encoding empirically. Listeners were asked to categorize fricatives in CV syllables constructed by splicing the fricative from one CV syllable with the vowel from another CV syllable. The two spliced syllables always contained the same fricative, providing consistent bottom-up cues; however on some trials, the vowel and/or talker mismatched between these syllables, giving conflicting contextual information. Listeners were less accurate and slower at identifying the fricatives in mismatching splices. This suggests that listeners rely on context information beyond bottom-up acoustic cues during speech perception, providing support for contingent categorization.
speech perception contingent categorization expectation fricatives

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