A developmental study of the perception of onset spectra for stop consonants in different vowel environments

Ochs²

1996

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It has been hypothesized that the acoustic properties within a temporal domain of 10 to 30 ms of boundaries between speech sounds contain significant information on the phonetic features of segments, and that these cues are perceptually integrated by the auditory system [Stevens, Phonetic Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Peter Ladefoged (Academic, London, 1985)]. The purpose of the current research was to examine the effects of stimulus duration adjacent to speech sound boundaries on the perceptual integration of place of articulation of nasals before and after disruption of the abrupt changes in spectra between the murmur and transition. In experiment I, three children, aged 3, 5, and 7 years, and an adult female and male produced consonant-vowel (CV) syllables consisting of [m] and [n] in four vowel contexts, [i ae u a]. Approximately 25-ms segments of the murmur and vowel transition adjacent to the speech sound boundary were digitally removed from these productions. Intervals of silence ranging from 0 to 2000 ms, which can potentially perturb integration processes, were inserted between these segments. The stimuli were then presented to adult listeners for the identification of the nasal. The main findings revealed a consistent decline in identification with gap durations up to 150 ms across speakers and vowel context. However, the adult labial feature was resistant to perceptual change as a function of gap duration. This result appeared to relate to formant transition duration, and not to response bias. In experiment II, stimuli with durations shorter than those in experiment I were further analyzed for adult speakers. The main finding was a quantification of the acoustic segment duration needed for perceptual integration of the murmur and vowel transition. Across both experiments, the results reveal a decline in the identification of both alveolar and labial nasals within a time interval mediated by short-term auditory memory, and that the duration of the acoustic segment needed for perceptual integration is longer for [n] than [m].

Section: B Temporal and Phonetic Feature Effectssupporting

confidence: 80%

The effect of segment duration on the perceptual integration of nasals for adult and child speech

Ochs²

1996

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“…Second, vowel identification by adults was as accurate for straight transitions as for moving transitions. Variations in stimuli between these two studies may have contributed to the different results ͑see Ohde et al, 1995, for similar results in a study of consonant perception͒. The high levels of identification clearly show that our synthetic stimuli accurately represented the phonemic categories of the intended vowels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

A developmental study of vowel perception from brief synthetic consonant–vowel syllables

Haley

McMahon

1996

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The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptual role of brief synthetic consonant-vowel syllables as cues for vowel perception in children and adults. Nine types of consonant-vowel syllables comprised of the stops [b d g] followed by the vowels [i a u] were synthesized. Stimuli were generated with durations of 10, 30, or 46 ms, and with or without formant transition motion. Eight children at each of five age levels (5, 6, 7, 9, and 11 years) and a control group of eight adults were trained to identify each vowel in a three-alternative forced-choice (3AFC) paradigm. The results showed that children and adults extracted vowel information at a generally high level from stimuli as brief as 10 ms. For many stimuli, there was little or no difference between the performance of children and adults. However, developmental effects were observed. First, the accuracy of vowel perception was more influenced by the consonant context for children than for adults. Whereas perception was similar across age levels for stimuli in the alveolar context, the youngest children perceived vowels in the labial and velar contexts at significantly lower levels than adults. Second, children were more affected by variations in stimulus duration than were adults. This finding was particularly prominent for the syllable [ga], where the dependency on duration decreased with age in a nearly linear fashion. These findings are discussed in relation to current hypotheses of vowel perception in adults, and hypotheses of speech perception development.

“…Walley and Carrell suggested that formant transition motion was a potentially important cue in the perceptual development of stop consonants. However, research by Ohde et al ͑1995͒ found no support for the influence of dynamic formant motion in the perceptual development of stopconsonant place of articulation for 5-to 11-year-old children. If dynamic formant motion is an important cue in perceptual development, then it must operate prior to 5 years of age.…”

Section: B Dynamic Static and Integrated Cues In The Perceptual Dementioning

confidence: 88%

“…Several studies have examined the developmental role of the burst in the perception of stop consonants ͑Parnell and Amerman, 1978; Williams and Bush, 1978;Elliott et al, 1981;Ohde et al, 1995͒. Williams and Bush examined infants' discrimination of a ͓dÄ͔-͓gÄ͔ contrast, with and without release bursts. They found some evidence indicating that the presence of a burst facilitates place of articulation discrimination.…”

Section: B Dynamic Static and Integrated Cues In The Perceptual Dementioning

confidence: 98%

Stop-consonant and vowel perception in 3- and 4-year-old children

Haley

1997

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Recent research on 5- to 11-year-old children's perception of stop consonants and vowels indicates that they can generally identify these sounds with relatively high accuracy from short duration stimulus onsets [Ohde et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 3800-3812 (1995); Ohde et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 3813-3824 (1996)]. The purpose of the current experiments was to determine if younger children, aged 3-4 years, can also recover consonant and vowel features from stimulus onsets. Ten adults, ten 3-year olds, and ten 4-year-olds listened to synthesized syllables composed of combinations of [b d g] and [i u a]. The synthesis parameters included manipulations of the following stimulus variables: formant transition (moving or straight), noise burst (present or absent), and voicing duration (10, 30, or 46 ms). Developmental effects were found for the perception of both stop consonants and vowels. In general, adults identified these sounds at a significantly higher level than children, and perception by 4-year-olds was significantly better than 3-year-olds. A developmental effect of dynamic formant motion was obtained, but it was limited to only the [g] stop consonant. Stimulus duration affected the children's perception of vowels indicating that they may utilize additional auditory information to a much greater extent than adults. The results support the importance of information in stimulus onsets for syllable identification, and developmental changes in sensitivity to these cues for consonant and vowel perception.