Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability
Several studies have demonstrated that individuals’ ability to perceive a speech sound contrast is related to the production of that contrast in their native language. The theoretical account for this relationship is that speech perception and production have a shared multimodal representation in re...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021-05-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.660948/full |
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| author | Hung-Shao Cheng Caroline A. Niziolek Adam Buchwald Tara McAllister |
| author_facet | Hung-Shao Cheng Caroline A. Niziolek Adam Buchwald Tara McAllister |
| author_sort | Hung-Shao Cheng |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Several studies have demonstrated that individuals’ ability to perceive a speech sound contrast is related to the production of that contrast in their native language. The theoretical account for this relationship is that speech perception and production have a shared multimodal representation in relevant sensory spaces (e.g., auditory and somatosensory domains). This gives rise to a prediction that individuals with more narrowly defined targets will produce greater separation between contrasting sounds, as well as lower variability in the production of each sound. However, empirical studies that tested this hypothesis, particularly with regard to variability, have reported mixed outcomes. The current study investigates the relationship between perceptual ability and production ability, focusing on the auditory domain. We examined whether individuals’ categorical labeling consistency for the American English /ε/–/æ/ contrast, measured using a perceptual identification task, is related to distance between the centroids of vowel categories in acoustic space (i.e., vowel contrast distance) and to two measures of production variability: the overall distribution of repeated tokens for the vowels (i.e., area of the ellipse) and the proportional within-trial decrease in variability as defined as the magnitude of self-correction to the initial acoustic variation of each token (i.e., centering ratio). No significant associations were found between categorical labeling consistency and vowel contrast distance, between categorical labeling consistency and area of the ellipse, or between categorical labeling consistency and centering ratio. These null results suggest that the perception-production relation may not be as robust as suggested by a widely adopted theoretical framing in terms of the size of auditory target regions. However, the present results may also be attributable to choices in implementation (e.g., the use of model talkers instead of continua derived from the participants’ own productions) that should be subject to further investigation. |
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-433f12336fe040fbb6287872b4d5af5c |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1662-5161 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-17T00:54:26Z |
| publishDate | 2021-05-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-433f12336fe040fbb6287872b4d5af5c2022-12-21T22:09:38ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience1662-51612021-05-011510.3389/fnhum.2021.660948660948Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production VariabilityHung-Shao Cheng0Caroline A. Niziolek1Adam Buchwald2Tara McAllister3Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, New York City, NY, United StatesDepartment of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United StatesDepartment of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, New York City, NY, United StatesDepartment of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, New York University, New York City, NY, United StatesSeveral studies have demonstrated that individuals’ ability to perceive a speech sound contrast is related to the production of that contrast in their native language. The theoretical account for this relationship is that speech perception and production have a shared multimodal representation in relevant sensory spaces (e.g., auditory and somatosensory domains). This gives rise to a prediction that individuals with more narrowly defined targets will produce greater separation between contrasting sounds, as well as lower variability in the production of each sound. However, empirical studies that tested this hypothesis, particularly with regard to variability, have reported mixed outcomes. The current study investigates the relationship between perceptual ability and production ability, focusing on the auditory domain. We examined whether individuals’ categorical labeling consistency for the American English /ε/–/æ/ contrast, measured using a perceptual identification task, is related to distance between the centroids of vowel categories in acoustic space (i.e., vowel contrast distance) and to two measures of production variability: the overall distribution of repeated tokens for the vowels (i.e., area of the ellipse) and the proportional within-trial decrease in variability as defined as the magnitude of self-correction to the initial acoustic variation of each token (i.e., centering ratio). No significant associations were found between categorical labeling consistency and vowel contrast distance, between categorical labeling consistency and area of the ellipse, or between categorical labeling consistency and centering ratio. These null results suggest that the perception-production relation may not be as robust as suggested by a widely adopted theoretical framing in terms of the size of auditory target regions. However, the present results may also be attributable to choices in implementation (e.g., the use of model talkers instead of continua derived from the participants’ own productions) that should be subject to further investigation.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.660948/fullspeech perceptionspeech productionproduction variabilityspeech motor controlindividual differences |
| spellingShingle | Hung-Shao Cheng Caroline A. Niziolek Adam Buchwald Tara McAllister Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability Frontiers in Human Neuroscience speech perception speech production production variability speech motor control individual differences |
| title | Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability |
| title_full | Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability |
| title_fullStr | Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability |
| title_full_unstemmed | Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability |
| title_short | Examining the Relationship Between Speech Perception, Production Distinctness, and Production Variability |
| title_sort | examining the relationship between speech perception production distinctness and production variability |
| topic | speech perception speech production production variability speech motor control individual differences |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.660948/full |
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