Formation and tuning of complex auditory categories

这个项目是一个合作研究计划的延续，以了解一般的听觉 分类，因为它与言语感知有关。语言学习者形成（语音）听觉类别 来自许多说话者产生的经验语音的分布的母语声音。 然而，这些平均类别可能与特定说话者产生的语音不相关。为 例如，非本族语可能不遵守本族语者的正常模式。项目 本申请中描述的方法检查了人类将听觉类别“调谐”到 特殊的听力环境。从非母语和母语的英语演讲将被分析， 确定可能影响感知的声音分布的差异。这些作品将是 呈现给听众（有时以操纵的形式）作为分类任务的前兆。程度 将确定语音声音分类受说话者特定信息影响的程度。两 将研究这种能力背后的可能机制。在一组实验中，语音会 先有非言语的前兆。这些前体保留了一些声学结构， 语音前体句子，但没有语言/语音内容。分类的变化 语音将指示听觉系统将类别调谐到语音的声学构成。 周围环境的声音。在另一系列的实验中，听众将被训练分类 复杂的非言语声音的分布。经过训练后，分布图将发生变化。的能力 监听器跟踪这些变化和保持最佳性能将被检查。结果将 表明听众对声音类别分布特征变化的敏感性。采取 总之，这些实验将提供洞察听众的能力，以适应扰动的 正常的母语语音产生，更普遍地说，通知听觉分类理论。

This project is a continuation of a collaborative research program to understand general auditory categorization as it relates to speech perception. Language learners form (phonetic) auditory categoriesof native-language sounds from the distributions of experienced speech sounds produced by many talkers. However, these averaged categories may not be relevant to the speech produced by a specific talker. For example, non-native speech may not adhere to the normal patterns of native speakers. The project described in this application examines the ability of humans to "tune" auditory categories to characteristicsof the particular listening situation. Speech from non-native and native speakers of English will be analyzed to determine differences in the distributions of sounds that may affect perception. These productions will be presented to listeners (sometimes in manipulated forms) as precursors to a categorization task. The degree to which speech sound categorization is affected by talker-specific information will be ascertained. Two possible mechanisms underlying this ability will be examined. In one set of experiments, speech sounds will be preceded by non-speech precursors. These precursors retain some of the acoustic structure of the speech precursor sentences but none of the linguistic/phonetic content. Shifts in the categorization of the speech sounds will indictate that the auditory system tunes categories to the acoustic makeup of the surrounding context sounds. In another series of experiments, listeners will be trained to categorize distributions of complex non-speech sounds. After training, distributions regularities will change. The ability of listeners to track these changes and maintain optimal performance will be examined. The results will indicate the sensitivity of listeners to changes in the distributional characteristics of sound categories. Taken together, these experiments will provide insight into the ability of listeners to accommodate perturbations of normal native speech productions and, more generally, inform theories of auditory categorization.