Basierend auf der aktuellen Studienlage wurde versucht, Modellannahmen zum auditi- ven Sprachverständnisses weiter zu ergründen. Im Mittelpunkt stand dabei die Rolle des Gyrus angularis der sprachdominanten Hemisphäre bei der semantischen Integration von Worten in einen gegebenen Satzkontext. Zu diesem Zweck wurden 15 gesunde Proban- den mithilfe von repetitiver transkranieller Magnetstimulation (rTMS) in einem Sprach- verständnisexperiment untersucht. So konnte die funktionelle Relevanz der genannten Hirnregion in Abhängigkeit der Signalqualität des gehörten Satzes und des semanti- schen Kontextes untersucht werden. Zielparameter waren dabei der Anteil der korrekt wiederholten Wörter und Schlüsselwörter des Satzes sowie die Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit.

Varje dag använder vi människor vårt språk, i former som är både auditiva och visuella. Många av dessa situationer och scenarion som uppstår i dagens samhälle kan försämra dessa förhållanden av språket och vår förståelse för det. I följande studie undersöks en frågeställning som angriper uppfattat talspråk i försämrade förhållande i form av noise vocoding (NV) vilket är en form av ljudkodning och huruvida dessa påverkas av semantik, fonologi och modersmål. Stödet från semantik i studien representeras med meningar som antingen har hög eller låg koherens medan stödet från fonologin kommer från koppling mellan visuell och auditiv form. Studien består av 13 barn i åldern 10–13 år och ämnar undersöka om stöd av fonologi och semantik kan påverka en människas förståelse av språk riktat mot barn i årskurs 4 och 6 med svenska eller annat modersmål. Dataanalysen av statistiken görs med en three way ANOVA. Studiens resultat indikerade på att deltagarna återgav fler korrekta ord från meningar med hög koherens än med låg koherens vilket innebär en positiv påverkan av det semantiska stödet. Deltagarna visade även på en förbättring som innebär att det fonologiska stödet fungerade. Slutligen visades de deltagarna med svenskt modersmål ha större hjälp av det fonologiska och semantiska stödet än de deltagarna med annat modersmål.

The ability to hear is important to communicate with other people. People suffering from hearing loss are more likely to also suffer from loneliness and depression (Mener et al., 2013; Mo et al., 2005). To understand how degraded speech is recognized, the pop-out effect has been studied. The pop-out effect is the moment when a listener recognizes the meaning of degraded speech. Previous research on the pop-out effect in perception of speech has predominantly been focused towards top-down processes, such as form-based priming and semantic coherence in sentences. The purpose of this study was to research the relationship between emotional prosody and the perception of speech in varying levels of degraded speech. The participants were presented sentences with angry, neutral or happy prosody in varying levels of noise vocoding. The participants were then asked to rate the perceived amount of noise for each sentence, and if the prosody was perceived as positive, neutral or negative for each sentence. The results suggest that the participants' ability to perceive positive prosody in the sentences decreased more rapidly than negative as the amount of noise increased. The result did not show any statistically significant evidence that emotional prosody had any effect on the perceived amount of noise. Future research should further investigate emotional prosody together with emotional semantics, as an emotionally coherent spoken sentence, and the influences on speech perception in adverse listening conditions, in order to further investigate the factors contributing to the pop-out effect.

Speech perception is a fundamental function of successful vocal communication, and through prosody, we can communicate different emotions. The ability to recognize emotions is important in social interaction. Emotional prosody facilitates emotion recognition in vocal communication. Acoustic conditions are not always optimal, due to either environmental disturbances or hearing loss. When perceiving speech and recognizing emotions we make use of multimodal sources of information. The effect of noise-vocoding on speech perception and emotion recognition can increase the knowledge of these abilities. The effect of emotional prosody on speech perception and emotion recognition ability in adverse acoustic conditions is not widely explored. To explore the role of emotional prosody during adverse acoustic conditions, an online test was created. 18 participants (8 women) listened to semantically neutral sentences with different emotions expressed in prosody and presented with five different levels of noise (NV1, NV3, NV6, NV12, and Clear) using noise-vocoding. Participants’ task was to reproduce the spoken words and identify the expressed emotion (happy, surprised, angry, sad, or neutral). A Reading span test was included to investigate any potential correlation between working memory capacity and the ability to recognize emotions in prosody. Statistical analysis suggests speech perception could be facilitated by emotional prosody when sentences are noise-vocoded. The ability to recognize emotions in emotional prosody differentiated between the emotions on the different noise levels. The ability to recognize anger was least affected by noise-vocoding, and sadness was most affected. Correlation analysis shows no significant result between working memory capacity and emotion recognition accuracy.

Many of us have experienced that speech in a non-native language under noise can be challenging. This study examined whether semantic and phonological predictability improves the intelligibility of degraded speech in a non-native language. An online experiment was conducted with 15 participants. Based on these data, a repeated-measures ANOVA showed that both overall semantic and phonological prediction enhanced perceptual clarity in degraded speech for non-native listeners. Semantic predictability was effective for non-native speakers only when the sound quality was slightly intelligible. In contrast, phonological predicatively enhance perceptual clarity at all sound quality levels except in clear and unintelligible settings. Another aim of this study was to investigate if individual cognitive ability differences are related to the benefit of phonological and semantic predictability in the non-native context. Results showed a positive Spearman correlation between working memory score and the overall benefit of phonological predictability. As for the effect per sound level, the results were significant only at intermediately intelligible sound quality level. However, there was no correlation between working memory and the benefit of semantic coherence. Verbal fluency did not correlate with either of the benefits of semantic or phonetic predictability.

Basierend auf der aktuellen Studienlage wurde versucht, Modellannahmen zum auditi- ven Sprachverständnisses weiter zu ergründen. Im Mittelpunkt stand dabei die Rolle des Gyrus angularis der sprachdominanten Hemisphäre bei der semantischen Integration von Worten in einen gegebenen Satzkontext. Zu diesem Zweck wurden 15 gesunde Proban- den mithilfe von repetitiver transkranieller Magnetstimulation (rTMS) in einem Sprach- verständnisexperiment untersucht. So konnte die funktionelle Relevanz der genannten Hirnregion in Abhängigkeit der Signalqualität des gehörten Satzes und des semanti- schen Kontextes untersucht werden. Zielparameter waren dabei der Anteil der korrekt wiederholten Wörter und Schlüsselwörter des Satzes sowie die Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit.