Audiomotor Speech Rhythms and Their Perceptual Consequences

心理学和脑科学中一个长期存在的难题是，支撑感知和认知的系统（如视觉、听觉、意图）如何与产生行动的系统（如伸手、说话、行走）协调。尽管人们对这些单独的系统如何工作已经了解了很多，但对这些关键功能如何相互作用仍然知之甚少。这种相互作用在言语交际中尤为重要，在人类中具有显著的意义。为了成功地使用语音，既能与他人交流，又能监控自己说话，听觉语音感知回路和运动语音产生系统必须及时精确地对齐。这种时间协调对于计划说话、监测自己的错误、学习语言发音以及从对话中学习新单词都很重要。在这个研究项目中，研究者通过听觉-运动同步来研究这种对齐。他们使用行为、神经科学和计算方法来描述听觉-运动同步，并测试这种同步对现实生活行为（如单词学习）的影响。近期研究的一个重要特点是发现了一种简单的行为范式，即“自发语音同步测试”（SSS测试）。该测试衡量的是听者将自己的语音输出与听到的语音同步的精确程度。这个过程对个体差异非常敏感，表明并非所有听众都能很好地同步。值得注意的是，SSS测试的同步得分不仅与大脑解剖学和生理学高度相关，而且还能预测听众在重要的现实挑战中的表现，比如单词学习。这项新研究建立在SSS测试的新颖性、敏感性和广泛实用性的基础上。研究计划分为四个目标。首先，研究人员将优化测试，以供其他科学家广泛使用。其次，他们将进行新的实验，测试听觉-运动同步，即语音感知和语音产生系统之间的节奏一致性，是如何指导语音感知的。第三，他们将开发一个计算模型，以提供一个机制描述，并产生进一步的听觉-运动同步的可测试预测。第四，团队将探索同步对单词学习基本能力的影响。一个首要的、实际的、最终的目标是以开放获取的格式发布SSS测试。由于测试结果与单词学习、特定的神经连接模式和其他认知特征相关，因此对于研究人员、教育工作者和临床医生来说，它是一种有用、快速、易于实施的检测方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A long-standing puzzle in psychology and the brain sciences is how the systems that underpin perception and cognition (e.g., vision, hearing, intention) are coordinated with those that generate action (e.g., reaching, speaking, walking). Although a great deal has been learned about how these individual systems work, how these critical functions interact remains poorly understood. This interaction is especially important in speech communication, which is of remarkable significance in humans. In order to use speech successfully, both to communicate with others and to monitor oneself speaking, the auditory speech perception circuit and the motor speech production system must precisely align in time. This temporal coordination is important for planning to speak, monitoring one’s errors, learning language sounds, and learning new words from a conversation. In this research program, the investigators study this alignment through auditory-motor synchronization. They use behavioral, neuroscience, and computational approaches to characterize auditory-motor synchronization and test the consequences of this synchronization for real-life behaviors such as word learning. An important feature of recent work that motivates this research is the discovery of a simple behavioral paradigm, the “spontaneous speech synchronization test” (SSS test). The test measures how precisely listeners synchronize their own spoken output to speech that they hear. The procedure is remarkably sensitive to individual differences, revealing that not all listeners synchronize equally well. Notably, the synchronization scores from the SSS test not only correlate highly with brain anatomy and physiology but are also predictive of listeners’ performance in important real-life challenges, such as word-learning. The new research builds on the novelty, sensitivity, and broad utility of the SSS test. The research plan is organized into four aims. First, the investigators will optimize the test for broad use by other scientists. Second, they will perform new experiments that test how auditory-motor synchronization, i.e., the rhythmic alignment between speech perception and speech production systems, guides speech perception. Third, they will develop a computational model constructed to provide a mechanistic description as well as to generate further testable predictions of auditory-motor synchronization. Fourth, the team will explore the consequences of synchronization for the essential capacity of word learning. An overarching practical, final goal is to release the SSS test in an open access format. Because the test outcome correlates with word learning, specific patterns of neural connectivity, and other cognitive features, it can be a useful, quick, easy-to-implement assay for researchers, educators, and clinicians.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.