No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Spoken language is produced with a great deal of variability with which listeners must be able to cope. One source of variation is coarticulation, which is due to articulatory planning and transitions between segments. Recently, the temporal features of coarticulation were investigated during a picture/spoken-word matching task by using spliced stimuli carrying either congruent or incongruent subphonemic cues at the CV juncture (Archibald & Joanisse, 2011). ERPs were recorded with attention paid to the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) (Connolly & Phillips, 1994; Newman & Connolly, 2004) – a prelexical response sensitive to violations of phonological expectations. Results found that the PMN varied in response to coarticulation violations and concluded that phonetic features in spoken words influence prelexical processing during word recognition. Using a written-/spoken-word paradigm, Arbour, 2012 controlled phonological shape by using onsets that were either fricatives or stops, hypothesizing that coarticulatory information would be differentially processed due to their temporal differences. Findings supported the PMN’s sensitivity to coarticulation but also showed that temporal and physical differences between onsets modulated the effect. These results raise the question of whether acoustic distance between vowels will modulate prelexical processing of speech as reflected by the PMN amplitude: the focus of the current study. Words were organized into minimal sets such that all onset/coda combinations appeared with each vowel provided that English words resulted. Vowels were one of /i, u, æ, ɑ/, maximizing acoustic distance (height and backness). Data from 20 subjects indicate that the PMN is sensitive to the degree of difference between the original and post-splice vowels. When the number of distinctive features changing is greater, the result is an earlier, more robust PMN. This suggests that the rate of speech recognition is not static but dynamic, and is dependent on likeness of subphonemic features. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

No description available.

No description available.

<p>Neural responses to anticipatory coarticulatory cues were investigated across systematically varying phonological conditions. Congruent or incongruent subphonemic information was placed between an initial consonant and a vowel in a consonant-vowel- consonant (CVC) spoken word (Archibald & Joanisse, 2011). Due to physical and temporal differences across sound classes, the objective was to investigate whether coarticulatory information would be processed differently across controlled manipulations of onset (fricative vs. stop) and vowel type (height vs. backness). Event- related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a printed-word/spoken-word matching paradigm, in which participants indicated whether a visual prime stimulus and a spoken word matched/mismatched. The “Phonological Mapping Negativity” (PMN) component provides strong evidence that the use of coarticulatory information in speech recognition varies in strength and timing as a function of onset type (fricative vs. stop) and vowel height (high vs. low). Coarticulatory cues were more readily perceived in spoken word beginning with fricatives than with stops. Similarly, subphonemic variations were more easily detected in low vowels than in high vowels. Observed perceptual and temporal differences are interpreted to reflect variations in subphonemic and phonological processing.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

No description available.

Current models of spoken word recognition have been predominantly based on studies of Indo-European languages. As a result, little is known about the recognition processes involved in the perception of tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), and the role of lexical tone in speech perception. One view is that tonal languages are processed phonologically through individual segments, while another view is that they are processed lexically as a whole. Moreover, a recent study claimed to be the first to discover an early phonological processing stage in Mandarin (Huang et al., 2014). There seems to be a lack of investigations concerning tonal languages, as no clear conclusions have been made about the nature of tonal processes, or a model of spoken word recognition that best incorporates lexical tone. The current study addressed these issues by presenting 18 native Mandarin speakers with aural sentences with medial target words, which either matched or mismatched the preceding visually presented sentences with medial target words (e.g, 家 /jia1/ “home”). Violation conditions involved target words that differed in the following ways: tone violation, where only the tone was different (e.g., 价 /jia4/ “price”), onset violation, where only the onset was different (e.g., 虾 /xia1/ “shrimp”), and syllable violation, where both the tone and the onset were different (e.g., 糖 /tang2/ “candy”). We did not find evidence for an early phonological processing stage in Mandarin. Instead, our findings indicate that Mandarin syllables are processed incrementally through phonological segments and that lexical tone is strongly associated with semantic access. These results are discussed with respect to modifications for existing models in spoken word recognition to incorporate the processes involved with tonal language recognition. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)