Sensation & Perception: Speech

8 flashcards · Psychology · by lakesare

1. What are phonemes?

   Perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another.

2. What's a formant?

   Spectrum of vocal utterance of the vowel /i/. The smooth line on the lower spectrum is of the vocal tract transfer function. The resonant peaks of this curve are called formants. In its standards for acoustical terminology, the Acoustical Society of America (1994) defines formant thus: "Of a complex sound, a range of frequencies in which there is an absolute or relative maximum in the sound spectrum. Unit, hertz (HZ). NOTE-The frequency at the maximum is the formant frequency."

3. How to read a spectrogram? letter 'e'

   x - time y - frequency red color - largest amplitude A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time. A common format is a graph with two geometric dimensions: one axis represents time, and the other axis represents frequency; a third dimension indicating the amplitude of a particular frequency at a particular time is represented by the intensity or color of each point in the image. A very beautiful spectrogram: https://musiclab.chromee…

4. What's McGurk effect?

   Seeing the lips moving influences what the listener hears. Another property of speech perception is that it is multimodal; that is, our perception of speech can be influenced by information from a number of different senses. One illustration of how speech perception can be influenced by visual information is shown in Figure 13.10. At first our listener hears the sounds /ba-ba/ coming from the speakers. But when visual stimulation is added in the form of a videotape showing a person making the l…

5. What's aphasia?

   Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are a cerebral vascular accident (stroke), or head trauma, but aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, brain infections, or neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. However, the latter are far less common and so not as often mentioned when discussing aphasia. To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's speech or language must be significantly impaired in one (or mor…

6. Japanese and l/r?

   Young infants in all cultures can tell the difference between sounds that create all of the speech sounds used in the world’s languages, but by the age of 1, they have lost the ability to distinguish between some of these sounds (Kuhl, 2000). The classic example of this phenomenon is provided by Japanese children and adults. Six-month-old Japanese children can tell the difference between the /r/ and /l/ used in American English just as well as American children can. However, by 12 months, Japan…

7. Neurons from retina project into the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus. Neurons from cochlea project into the ___________________________ in the thalamus.

   medial geniculate nucleus Fibers from the retina and the cochlea also synapse in the thalamus, in the lateral geniculate nucleus for vision and the medial geniculate nucleus for hearing.

8. Working memory VS short-term memory?

   Working memory - aka working attention, how many items you can manipulate at a time (usually 5-7 items). Short-term memory - short-term storage, without organisation or manipulation. Short-term memory in general refers, in a theory-neutral manner, to the short-term storage of information, and it does not entail the manipulation or organization of material held in memory.