Abstract
There is ample evidence showing that listeners are able to quickly adapt their phoneme classes to ambiguous sounds using a process called lexically-guided perceptual learning. This paper presents the first attempt to examine the neural correlates underlying this process. Specifically, we compared the brain’s responses to ambiguous [f/s] sounds in Dutch non-native listeners of English (N=36) before and after exposure to the ambiguous sound to induce learning, using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). We identified a group of participants who showed lexically-guided perceptual learning in their phonetic categorization behavior as observed by a significant difference in /s/ responses between pretest and posttest and a group who did not. Moreover, we observed differences in mean ERP amplitude to ambiguous phonemes at pretest and posttest, shown by a reliable reduction in amplitude of a positivity over medial central channels from 250 to 550 ms. However, we observed no significant correlation between the size of behavioral and neural pre/posttest effects. Possibly, the observed behavioral and ERP differences between pretest and posttest link to different aspects of the sound classification task. In follow-up research, these differences will be further investigated by assessing their relationship to neural responses to the ambiguous sounds in the exposure phase.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of Interspeech 2019 |
Editors | G. Kubin, T. Hain, B. Schuller, D.E. Zarka, P. Hodl |
Publisher | ISCA |
Pages | 1223-1227 |
Number of pages | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Event | Interspeech 2019 : Crossroads of Speech and Language - Graz, Austria Duration: 15 Sept 2019 → 19 Sept 2019 |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH |
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ISSN (Print) | 2308-457X |
Conference
Conference | Interspeech 2019 |
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Country/Territory | Austria |
City | Graz |
Period | 15/09/19 → 19/09/19 |
Keywords
- Adaptation
- ERP
- Human speech processing
- Lexically-guided perceptual learning
- Neural correlates