Speech Perception Quiz
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Questions and Answers

Which aspect of a speech signal is perceived as pitch?

  • Intensity
  • Quality
  • Fundamental frequency (correct)
  • Volume

    • What is the main challenge referred to as the segmentation problem in speech perception?

  • Segregating continuous speech into discrete units (correct)
  • Identifying tone of voice
  • Distinguishing between different languages
  • Understanding non-verbal cues

    • How quickly can listeners typically adjust to distorted speech?

  • More than six sentences
  • Within one sentence
  • One to two sentences
  • Two to four sentences (correct)

    • What enables listeners to recognize the phoneme /d/ regardless of speaker or speech rate?

    <p>Normalization procedures (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What effect is caused by the transition from consonants to different vowels in speech sounds?

    <p>Coarticulation effect (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How do listeners manage to recognize the same speech sound produced by different speakers?

    <p>Through calibration of perceptions (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is perceived when listeners hear sounds like [di], [da], and [du] despite their physical distinctions?

    <p>A single phonological unit (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What adaptation time is typically required for listeners to adjust to non-native accents?

    <p>About one minute (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is categorical perception in speech processing?

    <p>The perception of distinct stimuli as belonging to the same category (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which process describes the identification of words from the speech signal?

    <p>Lexical access (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is one way that stress patterns can affect sentence meaning?

    <p>By differentiating between similar sentence structures (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following is NOT a component of successful language comprehension?

    <p>Looking up morphemes in the physical environment (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the role of top-down processing in speech comprehension?

    <p>To rely on higher-level contextual information (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In language comprehension, bottom-up processing primarily involves which of the following?

    <p>Building a phonological representation from acoustic information (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which aspect of comprehension refers to the mental updating of discourse understanding?

    <p>Mental modeling (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the process of segmenting in language comprehension involve?

    <p>Breaking continuous speech into meaningful units (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the process called when listeners determine the grammatical relations among the words in a sentence?

    <p>Parsing (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following best describes the role of ambiguity in sentence interpretation?

    <p>It is quickly resolved based on syntactic and semantic context. (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What type of error is characterized by the transposition of sounds in words, as exemplified by 'you have hissed my mystery lecture'?

    <p>Spoonerism (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    In syntactic processing, what do listeners have to decide about each incoming word?

    <p>Its grammatical category and structural fit (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is primarily activated when a subject encounters an ambiguous word in a sentence?

    <p>Both meanings and categories (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is the main focus of psycholinguistics?

    <p>Comprehension and production of language (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which process is NOT directly involved in speech comprehension according to psycholinguistics?

    <p>Constructing novel sentences (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What cognitive mechanism aids in understanding linguistic units?

    <p>Breaking the speech stream into phonemes (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Why might a grammatical sentence be difficult to comprehend?

    <p>It may be structurally complex (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the term 'lexicon' refer to in psycholinguistics?

    <p>The mental dictionary of words (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the mismatch between grammaticality and interpretability suggest about language processing?

    <p>Language processing is influenced by multiple mechanisms (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What begins the process of comprehending a spoken sentence?

    <p>Perceiving the acoustic speech signal (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following best describes speech production?

    <p>It involves using the lexicon and grammatical rules. (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which factor influences the speed of lexical access for a word?

    <p>The word's frequency of usage (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What effect does a larger phonological neighbourhood have on word retrieval?

    <p>It increases the complexity of retrieval. (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is semantic priming?

    <p>Activating a word through a related semantic concept (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How does the resting level of activation relate to word retrieval speed?

    <p>Words with lower activation require more mental effort. (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is morphological priming?

    <p>Priming that occurs due to the relationship between morphemes (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which word is likely to have a dense phonological neighbourhood?

    <p>Pat (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    How do high frequency function words behave in reading tasks?

    <p>They are frequently skipped over during reading. (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Why do listeners respond faster to certain words after hearing related words?

    <p>Due to enhanced retrieval of semantically linked words (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Flashcards

    Psycholinguistics

    The study of how we use our knowledge of language, including understanding and producing speech.

    Mental Lexicon

    The mental dictionary that holds our knowledge of words, their meanings, and their pronunciation.

    Sentence Comprehension

    The ability to understand the structure and meaning of sentences.

    Speech Production

    The process of creating and speaking sentences.

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    Phoneme

    The smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. Example: "cat" vs. "bat"

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    Speech Segmentation

    The process of breaking down a continuous stream of speech sounds into meaningful units like words and syllables.

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    Language Processing

    The study of how humans produce and understand language.

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    Theory of Linguistic Performance

    A theory that attempts to explain the mental processes involved in language production and comprehension.

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    Fundamental Frequency

    The fundamental frequency of a speech signal is the rate of vibration of the vocal cords, which is perceived as pitch.

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    Intensity

    Intensity, or loudness, is the perceived strength of the speech signal.

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    Speech Quality

    Speech quality refers to the different characteristics of speech sounds, which distinguish one sound from another, such as the difference between the sounds "s" and "sh."

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    Spectrogram (Voiceprint)

    A spectrogram is a visual representation of the frequency components of a speech signal over time. It can also be called a 'voiceprint'.

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    Segmentation Problem

    The segmentation problem refers to the challenge of identifying meaningful units (like words, syllables, phonemes) in a continuous speech signal.

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    Speech Perception

    Speech perception is the process of understanding spoken language. It involves recognizing and interpreting speech sounds, and making sense of the language being spoken.

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    Speech Normalization

    This refers to the ability of listeners to adjust their perception of speech to cope with variations in a speaker's voice, accent, or speech rate.

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    Acoustic Cues

    Acoustic cues are specific sound features that provide information about speech sounds. They include the frequency of a sound, its duration, and its intensity.

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    Categorical Perception

    A phenomenon where listeners perceive physically similar sounds as belonging to the same category due to their knowledge of language.

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    Prosodic Cues in Speech

    The use of stress and intonation patterns to signal syntactic structure in speech.

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    Lexical Access (Word Recognition)

    The process of retrieving information about a word's meaning and grammatical properties from our mental lexicon.

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    Parallel Processing in Language Comprehension

    The ability to understand language involves processing multiple aspects of language simultaneously, such as segmenting sounds, identifying words, and interpreting their meaning.

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    Top-Down Processing in Language Comprehension

    The process of using higher-level information (meaning, grammar, context) to understand the speech signal.

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    Bottom-up Processing in Language Comprehension

    The process of building a representation of words based on their acoustic properties to understand speech.

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    Building a Mental Model in Language Comprehension

    The process of understanding sentences involves mentally constructing a representation of the situation described.

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    Syntactic Processing

    The process of mentally understanding the grammatical structure of a sentence, involving identifying word categories and their relationships.

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    Parse Tree

    A mental representation of a sentence that shows how its words and phrases are structured and connected.

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    Homographs

    Words that have the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings, depending on the context of the sentence.

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    Spoonerisms

    Speech errors where sounds, words, or phrases are mixed up, revealing the processes involved in planning and producing speech.

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    Lexical Access Speed

    The speed at which a listener can retrieve a particular word from their mental lexicon.

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    Word Frequency Effect

    The amount of time it takes to process a word depends on how often it is used. Common words are processed faster than uncommon words.

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    Phonological Neighborhood Density

    Words that sound similar to each other form a phonological neighborhood. Words in denser neighborhoods (more similar words) take longer to retrieve.

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    Word Activation Level

    The level of activation associated with a word in the mental lexicon. More frequently used words have higher resting activation levels.

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    Semantic Priming

    The process of hearing a word activating related words in the mental lexicon, making them more easily accessible. This effect is faster when the words are semantically related.

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    Morphological Priming

    A type of semantic priming where a morpheme of a multimorphemic word primes a related word. For example, "sheep" primes "wool."

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    Semantic Relatedness

    The property of being related in meaning. Words like "doctor" and "nurse" are semantically related.

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    Morpheme

    A morpheme is a meaningful unit of language. For example, "run" is a morpheme in "runner."

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    Study Notes

    Language and the Brain - Part 1

    • Learning Outcome: Understand processes involved in speech production and comprehension.

    • Agenda: The Human Mind at Work

    • Psycholinguistics: The study of how we use our linguistic knowledge in speech production and comprehension.

      • Focuses on linguistic performance (how we use language) and linguistic competence (knowledge of language).
      • Speech production involves accessing the lexicon (words), using grammar to form sentences, and producing sounds.
      • Speech comprehension involves accessing the lexicon and grammar to understand the sequence of words heard.

    • Other Psychological Processes in Language: Various cognitive processes are involved in the production and comprehension of language.

      • These processes enable the breakdown of continuous speech sounds into meaningful units (e.g., phonemes, syllables, words).
      • Other mechanisms determine how words are pulled from the mental lexicon and assembled.
      • Typically, understanding and producing sentences happens without conscious effort or awareness. However, speech errors and comprehension difficulties can occur.

    • Psycholinguistics & Sentence Examples:

      • Presenting three sentences, with the first example demonstrating a commonly perceived ungrammaticality which is perceived as grammatically correct in another example. This illustrates that language processing includes more than just grammar.

    • Comprehending Speech Signals: Understanding sentences involves multi-level analysis of the speech signal.

      • The acoustic speech signal comprises fundamental frequency (pitch), intensity (loudness), and quality (differences in speech sounds).
      • Speech waves can be visualized as spectrograms (voiceprints).

    Speech Perception

    • Speech as a Continuous Signal:
      • Sounds in natural speech overlap and influence each other. This creates a "segmentation problem" for listeners.
      • Recognising discrete units (words, syllables, phonemes) through various listeners’ strategies to understand speech signals, including the segmentation problem and adapting to different speakers and contexts.
    • Problems in Perception:
      • Speech perception mechanisms need to overcome variability and lack of discreteness in speech signals.
    • Listener Adaptation:
      • Listeners quickly adjust to foreign accents and distorted speech.
      • Listeners rely on various acoustic cues in the speech signal.
      • Acoustic elements' relationships are exploited by listeners.
    • Categorical Perception: Acoustic distinctions that language speakers perceive are not always as evident or clear as they may appear to or for the listener.
      • Language specifically affects how listeners perceive sounds or features, depending on their linguistic background or knowledge.
      • The perception of similar sounds as belonging to the same category is affected by language – listeners categorize spoken sounds to a specific category that depends on their language.
    • Stress and Intonation in Perception:
      • Stress patterns and intonation contours signal syntactic constituents in the speech stream.
      • Words in phrases at the end tend to be longer in duration than at the beginning, and intonation cues mark sentence boundaries.
      • Listeners rely on lexical knowledge to identify words (lexical access or word recognition).

    Language Comprehension

    • Parallel Processing: Successful language comprehension involves many operations occurring simultaneously, termed "parallel processing".
      • Stages involved include: Segmentation, morpheme and word recognition, finding appropriate word meanings, placing words in syntactical structures, interpreting phrases and sentences, creating a mental model of the discourse, and contextualization.

    Top-down and Bottom-up Processing

    • Involving Both: Perception and comprehension rely on both bottom-up (building from the acoustic signal) and top-down (using higher-level knowledge) processing.
      • Top-down processing utilizes higher-level knowledge, like semantic, syntactic, and contextual information to process the acoustic signal.
      • Bottom-up processing uses the acoustic signal directly to build phonological representations, look up word meaning in the lexicon, and construct semantic interpretation.

    Lexical Access

    • Definition: Lexical access is the process of obtaining word information (meaning and syntactic properties) from the mental lexicon.
    • Factors Affecting Speed:
      • The frequency of words in usage affects how quickly listeners respond to them or make a lexical decision (more frequent words faster access).
      • Words with larger phonological neighbourhoods (similar-sounding words) require more processing time than words with smaller neighbourhoods.
    • Semantic Priming: Earlier word(s) heard can activate related words in the mental lexicon.
    • Morphological Priming: A kind of semantic priming where a morpheme of a multi-morphemic word primes a related word (ex. sheepdog + wool)

    Syntactic Processing

    • Definition: Parsing involves determining the syntactic relations among words and phrases in a sentence.
      • It is heavily influenced by the rules of grammar.
      • Listeners actively build a structural representation of the sentence as they hear it; thus, they must determine the grammatical category and fit into the sentence's structure.
      • Determining syntactic relationships among words and phrases. Examples include ambiguous words like "fire" being a noun or verb.
    • Ambiguous Words: Identifying syntactic and semantic contexts helps resolve ambiguity quickly.

    Speech Production

    • Stages: Sound organisation within words and within sentences is linear; pre-articulation / planning stages include units larger than phonemes.
    • Spoonerisms: Speech mistakes revealing that planning involves larger units in language production.

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    ALS426 Language And The Brain Part 1 PDF

    Description

    Test your knowledge on key concepts in speech perception. This quiz covers questions related to pitch, segmentation, categorical perception, and the effects of speaker variations. Challenge yourself to understand how listeners process and interpret speech signals!

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