Speech shadowing

Abstract: The precise neural mechanisms underlying speech perception are still to a large extent unknown The most accepted view is that speech perception depends on auditory-cognitive mechanisms specifically devoted to the analysis of speech sounds An alternative view is that, crucial for speech perception, it is the activation of the articulatory (motor) gestures that generate these sounds The listener understands the speaker when his/her articulatory gestures are activated (motor theory of speech perception) Here, by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we demonstrate that, during speech listening, there is an increase of motor-evoked potentials recorded from the listeners' tongue muscles when the presented words strongly involve, when pronounced, tongue movements Although these data do not prove the motor theory of speech perception, they demonstrate for the first time that word listening produces a phoneme specific activation of speech motor centres

Abstract: PART I: Speech and language 1. Communication 2. The production of speech 3. The sounds of speech 4. The description and classification of speech sounds 5. Sounds in language PART II: The sounds of English 6. The historical background 7. Standard and regional accents 8. The English vowels 9. The English consonants PART III: Words and connected speech 10. Words 11. Connected speech 12. Words in connected speech 13. Teaching the pronunciation of English

Abstract: The precise neural mechanisms underlying speech perception are still to a large extent unknown. The most accepted view is that speech perception depends on auditory-cognitive mechanisms specifically devoted to the analysis of speech sounds. An alternative view is that, crucial for speech perception, it is the activation of the articulatory (motor) gestures that generate these sounds. The listener understands the speaker when his/her articulatory gestures are activated (motor theory of speech perception). Here, by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we demonstrate that, during speech listening, there is an increase of motor-evoked potentials recorded from the listeners’ tongue muscles when the presented words strongly involve, when pronounced, tongue movements. Although these data do not prove the motor theory of speech perception, they demonstrate for the first time that word listening produces a phoneme specific activation of speech motor centres.

Abstract: There are reasons to believe that infant-directed (ID) speech may make language acquisition easier for infants. However, the effects of ID speech on infants' learning remain poorly understood. The experiments reported here assess whether ID speech facilitates word segmentation from fluent speech. One group of infants heard a set of nonsense sentences spoken with intonation contours characteristic of adult-directed (AD) speech, and the other group heard the same sentences spoken with intonation contours characteristic of ID speech. In both cases, the only cue to word boundaries was the statistical structure of the speech. Infants were able to distinguish words from syllable sequences spanning word boundaries after exposure to ID speech but not after hearing AD speech. These results suggest that ID speech facilitates word segmentation and may be useful for other aspects of language acquisition as well. Issues of direction of preference in preferential listening paradigms are also considered.