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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

Published on: September 27, 2024

Attention and perceptual regularity in speech.

Maren Schmidt-Kassow¹, Sonja A Kotz

¹Independent Research Group Neurocognition of Rhythm in Communication, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. schmidt.kassow@yahoo.de

|November 13, 2009

Summary

People actively perceive regularities in speech, even subtle ones. This perception of speech patterns is attention-dependent, as shown by brain responses.

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Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations

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Published on: July 1, 2015

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Psycholinguistics
Auditory Perception

Background:

Perceptual regularities are well-studied in music but less so in speech due to speech's perceived irregularity.
Human auditory perception tends to impose rhythm on acoustic input, suggesting subjective influences beyond acoustic cues.
The role of attention in perceiving speech regularities remains an open question.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether humans perceive regularities in speech patterns.
To determine if subtle deviations in speech rhythm elicit measurable neural responses.
To explore the influence of attention on the perception of speech regularities.

Main Methods:

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to measure brain activity.
Participants listened to trochaic speech patterns with subtle deviations.
Task demands were manipulated to assess attention's role.

Main Results:

A significant P600 event-related potential response was observed, indicating regularity perception.
The magnitude of the P600 response varied depending on the experimental task.
Participants demonstrated sensitivity to subtle deviations in speech rhythm.

Conclusions:

The human brain actively perceives regularities in speech, not just in music.
Perceptual regularity in speech is influenced by attentional processes.
Event-related potentials, specifically the P600, can serve as an objective measure of speech regularity perception.