The Effects of Quantized Re-timing of Speech Rhythm on Spoken Language

接下来会发生什么？是大脑不断寻求答案的问题。在神经科学中，预测越来越被视为语言理解的关键，但人们对听者如何预测语言事件（声音、音节）何时发生的了解比对即将发生的事情了解得少。目前的神经语言处理理论认为节奏是一个关键因素，然而神经科学和语言科学对节奏的基础知识缺乏共同的理解。该项目旨在通过以下问题来解决这一差距：语音是否可以重新计时以最大限度地提高其可理解性？该研究将使用语音和音乐方法来通知语音的重新计时，并将使用创新的眼动追踪和脑电图范式来测试对理解的影响。语言理解的一个重要方面是预测词汇或语法单位的能力。广泛的研究已经证明了这一点，研究表明，在言语中违反期望的特征神经反应（例如Hagoort等人，2004年）。根据认知神经科学的最新理论，听者在一定程度上通过跟踪语音节奏的规律来实现这种预期，在大致对应于单个元音和辅音以及音节的时间尺度上（例如Giraud and Poeppel, 2012; Gross et al., 2013）。然而，这种情况与语音或行为现实并不相符。首先，在自然发生的语音中，几乎没有证据表明音节的产生有节奏规律（Cummins, 2012）。其次，节奏跟踪方法表明，让讲话更有规律有助于理解。但是，虽然以规则的时间间隔呈现孤立的音节可以产生处理效益（Otterbein等人，2012），但在连接语音中，规则化音节之间的间隔反而会产生处理成本（Aubanel等）。, 2016)。总而言之，规律可能是有益的，但并非总是如此：这种关系必须以一种难以理解的方式，在演讲中呈现出来。语音信号不一定要有规律才有节奏。在响应音乐节奏中，当听众呈现复杂的多节奏时，可以发现脉冲（或节拍）的神经相关性，其中脉冲在信号中不存在（Tal et al., 2017）。类似的原则可能适用于语音，但相关的实证工作尚未完成，与音乐相比，语音研究的节奏术语词典要少得多（Smith et al ., 2014）。为了理解言语的时间特征是如何促进理解的，可能有必要考虑一种以音乐为基础的更深入的节奏研究方法。本项目旨在通过回答两个研究问题来提高对节奏在语音理解中的作用的理解：1。当使用比平衡音节持续时间更复杂的方法时，重新计时语音以增加其节奏是否有助于语音理解？如果是这样，语音信号的哪些特性是重新定时的理想基础？

OverviewWhat's going to happen next? is a question the brain constantly seeks to answer. Inneuroscience, prediction is increasingly seen as the key to language comprehension, but lessis known about how listeners predict when linguistic events (sounds, syllables) will occur,than about what is coming. Current theories of neural speech processing suggest a key rolefor rhythm, yet neuroscience and the speech sciences lack a shared understanding of thebasics of rhythm. This project seeks to address this gap by asking: Can speech be re-timed soas to maximise its comprehensibility? The research will use phonetic and musicalapproaches to inform the re-timing of speech and the effects on comprehension will betested using innovative eye-tracking and EEG paradigms.ContextA crucial aspect of speech comprehension is the ability to anticipate lexical or grammaticalunits. This has been demonstrated by extensive research showing characteristic neuralresponses to violations of expectation in speech (e.g. Hagoort et al., 2004). According torecent theories in cognitive neuroscience, listeners achieve such anticipation in part bytracking regularities in speech rhythm, at timescales roughly corresponding to individualvowels and consonants, and to syllables (e.g. Giraud and Poeppel, 2012; Gross et al., 2013).However, this picture does not match well with phonetic or behavioural reality. First, thereis little evidence of rhythmic regularity in the production of syllables in naturally occurringspeech (Cummins, 2012). Second, the rhythm-tracking approach suggests that makingspeech more regular would help comprehension. But, while presenting isolated syllables atregular time intervals can yield processing benefits (Otterbein et al., 2012), regularising theintervals between syllables in connected speech instead has a processing cost (Aubanel etal., 2016). In sum, regularity can be beneficial, but is not always: the relationships have to beright for the speech being presented, in ways that are poorly understood.A speech signal does not necessarily need to be regular to be rhythmic. In response tomusical rhythms, neural correlates of the pulse (or beat) can be found when listeners arepresented with complex polyrhythms where the pulse is not physically present in the signal(Tal et al., 2017). Similar principles might apply in speech, but the relevant empirical workhas not been done, and speech research has a much reduced lexicon of terminology forrhythm compared to music (Smith et al, 2014). In order to understand how the temporalcharacteristics of speech facilitate comprehension, it may be necessary to consider a morenuanced approach to rhythm, informed by music.This project seeks to improve understanding of the role of rhythm in speech comprehensionby answering two Research questions:1. Does re-timing speech to increase its rhythmicity help speech comprehension, when amore sophisticated approach than equalising syllable durations is used?2. If so, on which properties of the speech signal should re-timing ideally be based?