Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2013 Apr 1;4:148. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00148. eCollection 2013.
The perception of speech sounds can be re-tuned through a mechanism of lexically driven perceptual learning after exposure to instances of atypical speech production. This study asked whether this re-tuning is sensitive to the position of the atypical sound within the word. We investigated perceptual learning using English voiced stop consonants, which are commonly devoiced in word-final position by Dutch learners of English. After exposure to a Dutch learner's productions of devoiced stops in word-final position (but not in any other positions), British English (BE) listeners showed evidence of perceptual learning in a subsequent cross-modal priming task, where auditory primes with devoiced final stops (e.g., "seed", pronounced [si:t(h)]), facilitated recognition of visual targets with voiced final stops (e.g., SEED). In Experiment 1, this learning effect generalized to test pairs where the critical contrast was in word-initial position, e.g., auditory primes such as "town" facilitated recognition of visual targets like DOWN. Control listeners, who had not heard any stops by the speaker during exposure, showed no learning effects. The generalization to word-initial position did not occur when participants had also heard correctly voiced, word-initial stops during exposure (Experiment 2), and when the speaker was a native BE speaker who mimicked the word-final devoicing (Experiment 3). The readiness of the perceptual system to generalize a previously learned adjustment to other positions within the word thus appears to be modulated by distributional properties of the speech input, as well as by the perceived sociophonetic characteristics of the speaker. The results suggest that the transfer of pre-lexical perceptual adjustments that occur through lexically driven learning can be affected by a combination of acoustic, phonological, and sociophonetic factors.
语音感知可以通过在接触到非典型语音产生的实例后，通过词汇驱动的感知学习机制进行重新调整。本研究探讨了这种重新调整是否对非典型声音在单词中的位置敏感。我们使用英语浊塞音来研究感知学习，荷兰英语学习者在词尾位置通常会使这些浊塞音清音化。在接触到荷兰学习者在词尾位置的清音浊塞音（但不在任何其他位置）后，英国英语（BE）听众在随后的跨模态启动任务中表现出感知学习的证据，其中带有清音浊塞音的听觉启动词（例如，“seed”，发音为 [si:t(h)]）促进了对带有浊音浊塞音的视觉目标（例如，SEED）的识别。在实验 1 中，这种学习效应推广到测试对中，关键对比出现在词首位置，例如，听觉启动词“town”促进了对视觉目标“DOWN”的识别。在接触过程中没有听到说话者发出任何停止音的对照组听众没有表现出学习效应。当参与者在接触过程中也听到了正确的浊音、词首停止音（实验 2），并且说话者是模仿词尾清音化的母语为 BE 的说话者（实验 3）时，这种向词首位置的推广就不会发生。感知系统准备将先前学习到的调整推广到单词内的其他位置的能力似乎受到语音输入的分布特性以及说话者感知的社会语音特征的调节。结果表明，通过词汇驱动的学习发生的预词汇感知调整的转移可能受到声学、音韵和社会语音因素的组合的影响。
