Influences of high-level knowledge and low-level perception in accented-speech processing across development

高级知识和低级感知对口音语音处理的影响

• 批准号: 1230003
• 负责人: Sarah Creel
• 金额: $ 37.68万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1230003&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Influences; level; knowledge; low; perception

We live in an increasingly interconnected world, and as a result, we often interact with speakers who sound different from us--they have different accents. Accent differences can result if two speakers of the same language grew up in different places (California vs. New Zealand), or if two speakers have different native languages (US English vs. Mexican Spanish). Because different accents use different sets of sounds to produce the same language, confusion can result. For instance, if a Spanish-accented speaker reports seeing a "sheep" outside, do they mean a wool-covered mammal or a large ocean-going vessel? This proposal examines two factors that may positively affect accented-speech comprehension in young children and in adults. One factor is perceptual learning, storing new mental representations of how Spanish-accented words sound. For instance, children may learn, at a subconscious level, that Spanish-accented versions of the English "ih" vowel are very acoustically similar to the English "ee" vowel. A second factor is language context, such as hearing an accented word in a semantically-plausible sentence like "We sailed across the ocean in a large _." The potential positive impacts of this project are both scientific and social. Scientifically, the project will increase understanding of perceptual-category learning in children and adults. It will clarify how perceptual learning and high-level knowledge like sentence context jointly influence accented-speech comprehension, which can improve not only human perception, but will suggest potential improvements to how computers recognize speech. The project will also generate a set of high- and low-probability Sentences to study Accent Understanding in Child Experiments (SAUCE). This sentence set will be made publicly available for other scientists to use, accelerating the pace of experimentation in speech comprehension in areas as diverse as accent perception, speech processing in noisy environments, and speech perception with cochlear implants (artificial hearing devices). Spanish-English bilingual researchers, a group who tend to be underrepresented in STEM fields, will be recruited for their language expertise, and will be mentored as they assist in conducting the research, increasing overall scientific participation. Socially speaking, the project will suggest how listeners can best improve their accent comprehension, facilitating communication in schools, workplaces, and the media.

我们生活在一个日益相互联系的世界中，因此，我们经常与听起来与我们不同的说话者互动-他们有不同的口音。如果两个说同一种语言的人在不同的地方长大（加州和新西兰），或者两个说同一种语言的人有不同的母语（美国英语和墨西哥西班牙语），就会产生口音差异。由于不同的口音使用不同的声音来产生相同的语言，因此可能会导致混淆。例如，如果一个讲西班牙口音的人报告说在外面看到了一只“羊”，他们指的是一只长满羊毛的哺乳动物还是一艘大型远洋船？该建议探讨了两个可能对幼儿和成人的重读言语理解产生积极影响的因素。一个因素是知觉学习，储存西班牙口音单词发音的新心理表征。例如，孩子们可能会在潜意识中学习到，英语元音“ih”的西班牙口音版本在声学上与英语元音“ee”非常相似。第二个因素是语境，比如在一个语义上合理的句子中听到一个重音单词，比如“我们在一个大的海洋中航行。“该项目的潜在积极影响既有科学方面的，也有社会方面的。科学上，该项目将增加对儿童和成人感知类别学习的理解。它将阐明感知学习和高级知识（如句子上下文）如何共同影响重读语音理解，这不仅可以改善人类的感知，而且还将对计算机识别语音的方式提出潜在的改进。该项目还将生成一组高概率和低概率句子，以研究儿童实验中的口音理解（酱料）。这套句子将公开提供给其他科学家使用，加快语音理解实验的步伐，这些实验涉及口音感知、嘈杂环境中的语音处理以及人工耳蜗（人工听力设备）的语音感知等领域。西班牙语-英语双语研究人员，一个在STEM领域往往代表性不足的群体，将因其语言专业知识而被招募，并将在他们协助进行研究时得到指导，提高整体科学参与度。在社会方面，该项目将建议听众如何最好地提高他们的口音理解能力，促进学校，工作场所和媒体的沟通。