The time course of speech perception and production in individual language users

阐明构成言语产生和感知的高度复杂的动态过程，对我们理解人类语言处理和改进计算机媒介通信技术都至关重要。说话者必须流畅地协调多个发声器官（如嘴唇、舌头和下巴）的动作，以产生流利快速讲话所必需的重叠动作。在从产生的声音信号中获得意义时，听众必须注意随着时间的推移而变化的声学特性。在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，Beddor博士和Coetzee博士正在研究口语产生的动态与感知之间的关系。先前的研究发现，说话者在发音协调的精确模式上存在差异，而听众在判断说话者所说内容时，对这些可变的发音模式的敏感度也存在差异。这个项目调查了听者在感知中使用的共发音信息和语言使用者自己的共发音产品之间是否存在联系。在假设语言使用者的感知和生产之间的关系受到社会、认知和其他因素的调节的指导下，一系列实验测试了社会中性和社会索引的发音协调模式。这些实验还测试了语言使用者对新的协调模式的感知意识和发音适应。听者对声音信号的实时处理使用眼动追踪方法进行监测；通过气流、超声成像和声学分析来评估生产的时间过程。该项目将收集有关美国英语和南非荷兰语的生产和认知的数据。南非荷兰语的工作将扩大对语音研究不足的语言的经验覆盖范围，并将扩大与南非研究人员的合作。研究个体语言使用者的生产-感知关系的首要目标是了解语言结构如何在人类思维中被表征。在其社会背景下阐明这种关系也有助于理解这些结构中的个体差异如何作为通过言语社区传播的新声音模式的来源。

Clarifying the highly complex dynamic processes that underlie the production and perception of speech is critical both to our understanding of human language processing and to improvements in technologies for computer-mediated communication. Speakers must fluently coordinate the actions of multiple vocal organs (such as the lips, tongue, and jaw) to produce the overlapping movements necessary for smooth and rapid speech. In deriving meaning from the resulting acoustic signal, listeners must attend to the changing acoustic properties as they evolve over time.With the support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Beddor and Dr. Coetzee are studying the relation between the dynamics of spoken language production and perception. Previous research has found that speakers differ from each other in their precise patterns of articulatory coordination, and that listeners differ in their sensitivity to those variable coarticulated patterns in deciding what a speaker has said. This project investigates whether there is a link between a listener's use of coarticulatory information in perception and that language user's own coarticulated productions. Guided by the hypothesis that the relation between a language user's perception and production is mediated by social, cognitive, and other factors, a series of experiments tests both socially neutral and socially indexed patterns of articulatory coordination. These experiments also test language users' perceptual awareness of, and articulatory accommodation to, new patterns of coordination. Listeners' real-time processing of the acoustic signal is monitored using eye-tracking methods; the time course of production is assessed via airflow, ultrasound imaging, and acoustic analysis. The project will gather data on the production and perception of America English and Afrikaans. The Afrikaans work will broaden empirical coverage of a phonetically understudied language and will extend collaboration with South African researchers. An overarching goal of studying the production-perception relation in individual language users is to understand how linguistic structures are represented in the human mind. Elucidating this relation in its social context should also contribute to an understanding of how individual differences in these structures might serve as a source of new sound patterns that spread through a speech community.