Cross linguistic studies on spoken language processing

描述(申请人提供)：本项目的长期目标是了解语言环境中的口语处理(特别是语音感知和听觉单词识别)。语音信号在人类体验中是独一无二的，因为它们是高度熟悉的，在日常生活中具有很大的现实意义。因此，人们开发专门针对语音调整的优化处理策略也就不足为奇了(参见。Werker&Tees，1984；Kuhl等人，1992)。在这个项目中，我们研究了这种调谐过程如何对语言结构敏感。 在拟议的工作中解决了两个关键问题。(1)语言经验改变了言语知觉机制中的什么？以及(2)语言/语音信息是如何编码用于语音处理的？ 这些问题将在一组九项研究中得到解决，这些研究涉及四个具体目标。(1)区分语言特有的知觉加工和语言通用的语音听觉敏感度。(2)确定特定语言的语音处理是否与词典绑定。(3)检验语音/知觉知识倾向于处理不同的语音特征的说法。(4)将实验结果模拟为语音感知的显性理论。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of this project is to understand spoken language processing (particularly speech perception and auditory word recognition) in linguistic context. Speech signals are unique in human experience because they are highly familiar, and have great practical significance in daily life. Therefore, it is not too surprising to find that people develop optimized processing strategies tuned specifically for speech (cf. Werker & Tees, 1984; Kuhl et al., 1992). In this project, we study how this tuning process may be sensitive to linguistic structure. Two key questions are addressed in the proposed work. (1) What in the speech perception mechanism is altered by linguistic experience? and (2) how is linguistic/phonetic information encoded for speech processing? These questions will be addressed in a set of nine studies that address four specific aims. (1) Distinguish between language-specific perceptual processing and language-universal auditory sensitivity for speech sounds. (2) Determine whether language-specific speech processing is tied to the lexicon. (3) Test the claim that phonetic/perceptual knowledge is oriented toward handling distinctive phonological features. (4) Model the experimental results in an explicit theory of speech perception.