A Picture May Be Worth 1,000 Words, but Is It Worth a Letter? Examining Whether the Choice of Label Affects the Perception of Speech Sounds.

Purpose: Researchers often use identification or goodness rating tasks to assess speech perception for different populations. These tasks provide useful information about a listener's willingness to accept a range of acoustically variable stimuli as belonging to the same category and also about assessing how stimuli that are labeled the same may not be perceived as equally good versions of a particular speech sound. Many methodological aspects of these simple tasks have been tested, but one aspect that has not is the choice of label.

Examining the Relationship Between Multiple Tests of Receptive Vocabulary.

Purpose: Numerous tasks have been developed to measure receptive vocabulary, many of which were designed to be administered in person with a trained researcher or clinician. The purpose of the current study is to compare a common, in-person test of vocabulary with other vocabulary assessments that can be self-administered.

Method: Fifty-three participants completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) via online video call to mimic in-person administration, as well as four additional fully automated, self-administered measures of receptive vocabulary.

Spectral analysis of strident fricatives in cisgender and transfeminine speakersa).

The spectral features of /s/ and /ʃ/ carry important sociophonetic information regarding a speaker's gender. Often, gender is misclassified as a binary of male or female, but this excludes people who may identify as transgender or nonbinary. In this study, we use a more expansive definition of gender to investigate the acoustics (duration and spectral moments) of /s/ and /ʃ/ across cisgender men, cisgender women, and transfeminine speakers in voiced and whispered speech and the relationship between spectral measures and transfeminine gender expression.

Intelligibility as a measure of speech perception: Current approaches, challenges, and recommendations.

Intelligibility measures, which assess the number of words or phonemes a listener correctly transcribes or repeats, are commonly used metrics for speech perception research. While these measures have many benefits for researchers, they also come with a number of limitations. By pointing out the strengths and limitations of this approach, including how it fails to capture aspects of perception such as listening effort, this article argues that the role of intelligibility measures must be reconsidered in fields such as linguistics, communication disorders, and psychology.

Teaching acoustic phonetics to undergraduates in communication sciences and disorders: Course structure and sample projects.

Virtually all undergraduate communication sciences and disorders programs require a course that covers acoustic phonetics. Students typically have a separate phonetics (transcription) course prior to taking the acoustic phonetics course. This paper describes a way to structure an acoustic phonetics course into two halves: a first half that focuses on the source, including basic acoustics (simple harmonic motion, harmonics), vocal fold vibration, modes of phonation, and intonation, and a second half that focuses on the filter, including resonance and tube models, vowel formants, and consonant acoustics.

Phonotactic and lexical factors in talker discrimination and identification.

Previous research has shown that listeners are better at processing talker information in their native language compared to an unfamiliar language, a phenomenon known as the language familiarity effect. Several studies have explored two mechanisms that support this effect: lexical status and phonological familiarity. Further support for the importance of phonological knowledge comes from studies showing that participants with poorer reading skills perform worse on talker processing tasks.

Effect of Anchor Term on Auditory-Perceptual Ratings of Feminine and Masculine Speakers.

Background: Studies investigating auditory perception of gender expression vary greatly in the specific terms applied to gender expression in rating scales.

Purpose: This study examined the effects of different anchor terms on listeners' auditory perceptions of gender expression in phonated and whispered speech. Additionally, token and speaker cues were examined to identify predictors of the auditory-perceptual ratings.

Differences in perceptual assimilation following training.

Learning to perceive non-native speech sounds is difficult for adults. One method to improve perception of non-native contrasts is through a distributional learning paradigm. Three groups of native-English listeners completed a perceptual assimilation task in which they mapped French vowels onto English vowel categories: Two groups (bimodal, unimodal distribution) completed a perceptual learning task for the French /œ/-/o/ contrast and a third completed no training.

Acoustic differences between voiced and whispered speech in gender diverse speakers.

Whispered speech is a naturally produced mode of communication that lacks a fundamental frequency. Several other acoustic differences exist between whispered and voiced speech, such as speaking rate (measured as segment duration) and formant frequencies. Previous research has shown that listeners are less accurate at identifying linguistic information (e.

Re-Examining the Effect of Top-Down Linguistic Information on Speaker-Voice Discrimination.

The current study replicated and extended the results from a study conducted by Narayan, Mak, and Bialystok (2017) that found effects of top-down linguistic information on a speaker discrimination task by examining four conditions: rhymes (day-bay), compounds (day-dream), reverse compounds (dream-day), and unrelated words (day-bee). The original study found that participants were more likely to judge two words to be spoken by the same speaker if the words cohered lexically (created lexical compounds such as day-dream) or were phonologically related (rhymes, such as day-bay), but their study contained two limitations: (a) Same- and different-speaker trials were analyzed separately, which obscures effects of response bias, and (b) cross-gender pairs were used in the different-speaker trials, potentially inflating performance. The current study addresses these limitations by including only within-gender trials and by examining sensitivity and bias using signal detection theory.

Training a non-native vowel contrast with a distributional learning paradigm results in improved perception and production.

Previous distributional learning research suggests that adults can improve perception of a non-native contrast more efficiently when exposed to a bimodal than a unimodal distribution. Studies have also suggested that perceptual learning can transfer to production. The current study tested whether the addition of visual images to reinforce the contrast and active learning with feedback would result in lcearning in both conditions and would transfer to gains in production.

Effect of Phonation on Perception of Femininity/Masculinity in Transgender and Cisgender Speakers.

Many transwomen seek voice and communication therapy to support their transition from their gender assigned at birth to their gender identity. This has led to an increased need to examine the perception of gender and femininity/masculinity to develop evidence-based intervention practices. In this study, we explore the auditory perception of femininity/masculinity in normally phonated and whispered speech.

Language Ability and the Familiar Talker Advantage: Generalizing to Unfamiliar Talkers Is What Matters.

Purpose Previous studies with children and adults have demonstrated a familiar talker advantage-better word recognition for familiar talkers. The goal of the current study was to test whether this phenomenon is modulated by a child's language ability. Method Sixty children with a range of language ability were trained to learn the voices of 3 foreign-accented, German-English bilingual talkers and received feedback about their performance.

Short-term implicit voice-learning leads to a Familiar Talker Advantage: The role of encoding specificity.

Whereas previous research has found that a Familiar Talker Advantage-better spoken language perception for familiar voices-occurs following explicit voice-learning, Case, Seyfarth, and Levi [(2018). J. Speech, Lang.

Methodological considerations for interpreting the Language Familiarity Effect in talker processing.

The Language Familiarity Effect (LFE)-where listeners are better at processing talker-voice information in their native language than in an unfamiliar language-has received renewed attention in the past 10 years. Numerous studies have sought to probe the underlying causes of this advantage by cleverly manipulating aspects of the stimuli (using phonologically related languages, backwards speech, nonwords) and by examining individual differences across listeners (testing reading ability and pitch perception). Most of these studies find evidence for the importance of phonological information or phonological processing as a supporting mechanism for the LFE.

Does Implicit Voice Learning Improve Spoken Language Processing? Implications for Clinical Practice.

Purpose: In typical interactions with other speakers, including a clinical environment, listeners become familiar with voices through implicit learning. Previous studies have found evidence for a Familiar Talker Advantage (better speech perception and spoken language processing for familiar voices) following explicit voice learning. The current study examined whether a Familiar Talker Advantage would result from implicit voice learning.

Generalization of Phonetic Detail: Cross-Segmental, Within-Category Priming of VOT.

The current study examined whether fine-grained phonetic detail (voice onset time (VOT)) of one segment (/p/ or /k/) generalizes to a different segment (/t/) within the same natural class. Two primes were constructed to exploit the natural variation of VOT: a velar stop followed by a high vowel (keen) resulting in a naturally long VOT and a labial stop followed by a low vowel (pan) resulting in a naturally shorter VOT. Two experiments were conducted, one in which the speakers produced both the prime and the target, and a second in which the speakers heard the primes and then produced the targets.

Individual differences in learning talker categories: the role of working memory.

The current study explores the question of how an auditory category is learned by having school-age listeners learn to categorize speech not in terms of linguistic categories, but instead in terms of talker categories (i.e., who is talking).

Talker familiarity and spoken word recognition in school-age children.

Research with adults has shown that spoken language processing is improved when listeners are familiar with talkers' voices, known as the familiar talker advantage. The current study explored whether this ability extends to school-age children, who are still acquiring language. Children were familiarized with the voices of three German-English bilingual talkers and were tested on the speech of six bilinguals, three of whom were familiar.

The development of language-specific and language-independent talker processing.

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to investigate how differences in language ability relate to differences in processing talker information in the native language and an unfamiliar language by comparing performance for different ages and for groups with impaired language.

Method: Three groups of native English listeners with typical language development (TLD; ages 7-9, ages 10-12, adults) and 2 groups with specific language impairment (SLI; ages 7-9, ages 10-12) participated in the study. Listeners heard pairs of words in both English and German (unfamiliar language) and were asked to determine whether the words were produced by the same or different talkers.

Effects of cross-language voice training on speech perception: whose familiar voices are more intelligible?

Previous research has shown that familiarity with a talker's voice can improve linguistic processing (herein, "Familiar Talker Advantage"), but this benefit is constrained by the context in which the talker's voice is familiar. The current study examined how familiarity affects intelligibility by manipulating the type of talker information available to listeners. One group of listeners learned to identify bilingual talkers' voices from English words, where they learned language-specific talker information.

Language identification from visual-only speech signals.

Our goal in the present study was to examine how observers identify English and Spanish from visual-only displays of speech. First, we replicated the recent findings of Soto-Faraco et al. (2007) with Spanish and English bilingual and monolingual observers using different languages and a different experimental paradigm (identification).

Identification and discrimination of bilingual talkers across languages.

This study investigated the extent to which language familiarity affects the perception of the indexical properties of speech by testing listeners' identification and discrimination of bilingual talkers across two different languages. In one experiment, listeners were trained to identify bilingual talkers speaking in only one language and were then tested on their ability to identify the same talkers speaking in another language. In the second experiment, listeners discriminated between bilingual talkers across languages in an AX discrimination paradigm.

Nonword repetition with spectrally reduced speech: some developmental and clinical findings from pediatric cochlear implantation.

Nonword repetition skills were examined in 24 pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users and 18 normal-hearing (NH) adult listeners listening through a CI simulator. Two separate groups of NH adult listeners assigned accuracy ratings to the nonword responses of the pediatric CI users and the NH adult speakers. Overall, the nonword repetitions of children using CIs were rated as more accurate than the nonword repetitions of the adults.

Speaker-independent factors affecting the perception of foreign accent in a second language.

Previous research on foreign accent perception has largely focused on speaker-dependent factors such as age of learning and length of residence. Factors that are independent of a speaker's language learning history have also been shown to affect perception of second language speech. The present study examined the effects of two such factors--listening context and lexical frequency--on the perception of foreign-accented speech.