CAREER: The Role of Prosody in Word Segmentation and Lexical Access

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。理解人类如何理解语音是一个未解决的和具有挑战性的问题，部分原因是语音信号的声学特性（即频率，定时和振幅）与听者感知到的单词之间存在多对多映射。本研究的重点是音调、响度和语速（统称为韵律）对理解口语单词的贡献。以前，语音信号的这些韵律方面被认为在口语单词识别、分词和词汇获取中起着次要作用。然而，最近的研究结果表明，语音韵律对单词的理解有很大的影响。这项研究有可能在人类健康、技术和科学方面取得重大进展。例如，在许多影响语言和语言的疾病中，包括阅读障碍、自闭症、口吃、帕金森氏病、失语和构音障碍，对音高、响度和/或说话时机的感知或产生经常高度中断。拟议的研究可能会导致关于这些疾病的机制的新见解，这将为那些受折磨的人提供更好的治疗方法。此外，这项研究有可能改善语音技术的应用，从增强的计算机自动语音识别到更自然的计算机生成语音。这项工作为高中、本科和研究生阶段的学生提供了研究经验。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Understanding how humans comprehend speech is an unsolved and challenging problem, in part because of the many-to-many mapping between the acoustical properties of the speech signal (i.e., frequency, timing, and amplitude) and the words perceived by the listener. The focus of this research is on the contributions of voice pitch, loudness, and speech rate (collectively termed prosody) to understanding spoken words. Previously, these prosodic aspects of the speech signal have been assumed to play a minor role in spoken word recognition, word segmentation, and lexical access. However, recent results suggest that speech prosody can have very significant effects on how words are understood.This research holds potential for significant advancements in human health, technology, and science. For example, perception or production of voice pitch, loudness, and/or speech timing are often highly disrupted in many disorders affecting speech and language, including dyslexia, autism, stuttering, Parkinsons disease, aphasia, and dysarthria. The proposed research may lead to new insights regarding mechanisms underlying these disorders, which will inform the development of better treatments for those afflicted. In addition, the research has potential to lead to improved speech technology applications, from enhanced automatic speech recognition by computer, to more natural-sounding computer-generated speech. The work provides research experiences for students at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels.