Lexical Integration of Continuous Acoustic Detail: Normal and Impaired Listeners

语音感知是将声音信号中的连续细节映射到离散的 意思就像单词一样。考虑到信号的可变性和到达的速度，系统必须应对 在很短的时间内有很大的变化。这项研究的长期目标是 了解这个过程是如何工作的。这项提议测试了现有工作的一个含义，表明词汇 激活对信号中的连续细节和当前的语音识别模型很敏感： 在线词汇激活过程(快速且并行地构建稳定的表征) 能够随着时间的推移积极整合连续的细节，以预测即将到来的材料，解决 过去，并组织感知过程。这将在四个系列的行为实验中进行测试，基于 论视觉世界范式。在这个范例中，受试者听到精心控制的口语，并 在监控眼球运动的同时，在视觉环境中操纵对象。凝视的概率 每个对象产生对该词的激活的逐时刻的估计(系统有多少 考虑到这个词)随着时间的推移而展开。前两个项目检查这些时态集成 正常听者对语音修饰语音的感知过程及其补偿 语速。在每一项中，我们将展示系统可以主动预测即将到来的材料和解决方案 过去的歧义材料，这些过程是由词汇因素调节的。在第三个项目中 我们明确地测试了这个框架，考察了连续细节可能导致歧义的情况 分辨率，但只有当它能保持比已知的短期回声存储操作更长的时间时。 这表明词汇过程在这种维持中起着独特的作用。第四个项目适用 这一语言障碍的框架，检验了知觉缺陷与SLI相关的假设 起源于词汇过程，而不是感知过程。最终，该项目将有助于了解 言语知觉及其与语言障碍的关系。因为感知能力和词汇能力通常 在更高级别的语言、诊断和基于它们的疗法可以更早地应用之前进行开发(和 因此，比其他技术更成功)。因此，在这里获得的基本知识可以 有助于早期发现和治疗系统性红斑狼疮。

Speech perception is a process of mapping continuous detail in the acoustic signal onto discrete units of meaning like words. Given the variability in the signal and speed at which it arrives, the system must cope with a great deal of variation in a small amount of time. The long term objective of this research is to understand how this process works. This proposal tests an implication of existing work showing that lexical activation is sensitive to continuous detail in the signal and for current models of spoken word recognition: that online lexical-activation processes (which are fast and work in parallel to build stable representations) can actively integrate continuous detail over time to anticipate upcoming material, resolve ambiguity in the past, and organize perceptual processes. This will be tested in four series of behavioral experiments based on visual world paradigm. In this paradigm, subjects hear carefully controlled spoken language and manipulate objects in a visual environment while eye-movements are monitored. The probability of fixating each object yields a moment-by-moment estimate of the activation for that word (how much the system is considering that word) as it unfolds over time. The first two projects examine these temporal integration processes in unimpaired listeners for the perception of phonologically modified speech and compensation for speaking rate. In each we will show that system can actively anticipate upcoming material and resolve ambiguous material in the past and that these processes are modulated by lexical factors. In the third project we explicitly test this framework examining situations in which continuous detail could facilitate ambiguity resolution, but only if it can retained longer than short-term echoic memory stores are known to operate. This would suggest that lexical processes play a unique role in this maintenance. The fourth project applies this framework to language impairments, testing the hypothesis that perceptual deficits associatedwith SLI originate in lexical, not perceptual, processes. Ultimately this project will contribute to basic knowledge of speech perception and its relationship to language disorders. Since perceptual and lexical abilities typically develop before higher level language, diagnostics and therapies based on them may be applied earlier (and as a result, more successfully) than other techniques. Thus, the basic knowledge acquired here may contribute to earlier detection and treatment of SLI.