Researcher degrees of freedom in phonetic research

Roettger, Timo B.

doi:10.5334/labphon.147

Cited by 50 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…the data according to post hoc exclusion criteria in order to avoid exploitation of researcher degrees of freedom (Roettger, 2019). We operate within the Bayesian inferential framework (rather than within a frequentist framework) for two reasons:…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…low probability of a statistical test to reject a false null hypothesis, e.g. for recent discussion of power in speech research see Kirby & Sonderegger, 2018;Nicenboim, Roettger, & Vasishth, 2018), violation of the independence assumption Winter, 2011Winter, , 2015, exploitation of researcher degrees of freedom (Roettger, 2019) and the 'significance' filter (i.e. treating results as publishable because p < 0.05 leads to over optimistic expectations of replicability, see Vasishth, Mertzen, Jäger, & Gelman, 2018) can lead to biased results.…”

Section: Background 21 the 'Replication Crisis' And Why We Should Bementioning

confidence: 99%

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Toward a replication culture: Speech production research in the classroom

Roettger¹,

Baer-Henney²

2018

Preprint

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Our understanding of human sound systems is increasingly shaped by experimental studies. What we can learn from a single study, however, is limited. It is of critical importance to evaluate and substantiate existing findings in the literature by directly replicating published studies. Our publication system, however, does not reward direct replications in the same way as it rewards novel discoveries. Consequently, there is a lack of incentives for researchers to spend resources on conducting replication studies, a situation that is particularly true for speech production experiments, which often require resourceful data collection procedures and recording environments. In order to sidestep this issue, we propose to run direct replication studies with our students in the classroom. This proposal offers an easy and inexpensive way to conduct large-scale replication studies and has valuable pedagogical advantages for our students. To illustrate the feasibility of this approach, we report on two classroom-based replication studies on incomplete neutralization, a speech phenomenon that has sparked many methodological debates in the past. We show that in our classroom studies, we not only replicated incomplete neutralization effects, but our studies yielded effect magnitudes comparable to laboratory experiments and meta analytical estimates. We discuss potential challenges to this approach and outline possible ways to help us substantiate our scientific record.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Background 21 the 'Replication Crisis' And Why We Should Bementioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a replication culture: Speech production research in the classroom

Roettger¹,

Baer-Henney²

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…What might be more relevant, though, is that the estimates of the difference in vowel duration are generally very low, between 3.5 and 15 ms. Given the small magnitude of the difference, it is likely that the failure to obtain significant p-values in some studies are due to low statistical power, rather than because of absence of the effect (as also hinted in Beguš 2017, see arguments in Roettger 2019 andNicenboim et al 2018).…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Some of the proposed mechanisms for the emergence of the voicing effect refer to properties of speech production. A notable production account, which will be the focus of this study, is based on compensatory temporal adjustments (Lindblom 1967;Slis & Cohen 1969a;b;Lehiste 1970a;b). According to this account, the voicing effect follows from the reorganisation of gestures within a unit of speech the duration of which is not affected by stop voicing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a consequence, vowels followed by voiceless stops (which have a long closure) are shorter than vowels followed by voiced stops (which have a short closure). Advocates of a compensatory mechanism propose two prosodic units as the scope of the temporal adjustment: the syllable (and, equivalently, the VC sequence or vowel-to-vowel interval, Lindblom 1967;Farnetani & Kori 1986), and the word (Slis & Cohen 1969a;b;Lehiste 1970a;b). However, the compensatory temporal adjustment account has been criticised in subsequent work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An exploratory study of voicing-related differences in vowel duration as compensatory temporal adjustment in Italian and Polish

Coretta

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Over a century of phonetic research has established the cross-linguistic existence of the so called "voicing effect", by which vowels tend to be shorter when followed by voiceless stops and longer when the following stop is voiced. However, no agreement is found among scholars regarding the source of this effect, and several causal accounts have been advanced. A notable one is the compensatory temporal adjustment account, according to which the duration of the vowel is inversely correlated with the stop closure duration (voiceless stops having longer closure durations than voiced stops). The compensatory account has been criticised due to lack of empirical support and its vagueness regarding the temporal interval within which compensation is implemented. The results from an exploratory study of Italian and Polish suggest that the duration of the interval between two consecutive stop releases in CVCV words in these languages is not affected by the voicing of the second stop. The durational difference of the first vowel and the stop closure would then follow from differences in timing of the VC boundary within this interval. While other aspects, like production mechanisms related to laryngeal features effects and perceptual biases cannot be ruled out, the data discussed here are compatible with a production account based on compensatory mechanisms.

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Phonetic cue weighting in perception and production

Schertz

Clare

2019

WIRES Cognitive Science

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Speech sound contrasts differ along multiple phonetic dimensions. During speech perception, listeners must decide which cues are relevant, and determine the relative importance of each cue, while also integrating other, signal-external cues. The comparison of cue weighting in perception and production bears on a range of theoretical issues including the processes underlying sound change, the time course of learning, the nature of cues, and the perception-production interface. Research examining the relative alignment of cue weighting across the modalities, on both a community and individual level, has revealed both parallels and asymmetries between the modalities. The extraordinarily wide range of ways that have been used to conceptualize and quantify cue weights reflects the inherent theoretical, methodological, and analytical differences between the two modalities. More consideration of the choices of analytical metrics, explicit discussion of the theoretical assumptions that underlie them, and systematic investigations of different types of cues will lead to more generalizable findings that can be incorporated into computational implementable models of speech processing. This article is categorized under:Linguistics > Language in Mind and Braincue weighting, phonetics, speech perception, speech production | INTRODUCTIONSpeech sound contrasts differ on multiple phonetic dimensions: for example, the English sounds /b/ and /p/ differ systematically in voice onset time (VOT, the amount of time between the stop release and onset of voicing), but also differ, albeit less reliably, in other dimensions including the duration of the stop closure and the fundamental frequency (f0, corresponding to perceived pitch) at the onset of voicing (Lisker, 1986). Phonetic cue weighting, or the relative use of these acoustic "cues," can be conceptualized and quantified in the context of both production and perception. For example, as shown in Figure 1, English speakers' productions of /b/ and /p/ show large and consistent differences in VOT, such that /b/ vs. /p/ category membership can by well-predicted using this cue alone. On the other hand, while /b/ is followed by a lower f0 than /p/ on average, this difference is much smaller and less consistent, such that f0 is only weakly predictive of category membership. This asymmetry between the two cues is reflected in perception: when asked to categorize sounds varying in aspiration duration and f0, listeners' responses are mainly determined by aspiration (the primary cue), with the value of f0 playing a secondary, albeit still detectable, role (Abramson & Lisker, 1985).

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Researcher degrees of freedom in phonetic research

Cited by 50 publications

References 90 publications

Toward a replication culture: Speech production research in the classroom

Toward a replication culture: Speech production research in the classroom

An exploratory study of voicing-related differences in vowel duration as compensatory temporal adjustment in Italian and Polish

Phonetic cue weighting in perception and production

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