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Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
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Altering context speech rate can cause words to appear or disappear
1Michigan State University, Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, 116 Oyer Building, East Lansing, MI 43403, USA. ldilley@msu.edu
Psychological Science
|September 30, 2010
Summary
Speech rate influences word perception. Listeners sometimes perceive words as missing or added based on speech speed, impacting language understanding in casual speech.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Speech Perception
- Phonetics
Background:
- Speech perception relies on timing.
- Casual speech has reduced phonetic segments.
- Function word perception is key to language comprehension.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate rate dependency in function word perception.
- Determine if speech rate affects function word recognition in casual speech.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments manipulated speech rate around function words.
- Listeners identified function words in sentences with varied speech rates.
- Stimuli included sentences with and without target function words.
Main Results:
- Slowing speech rate led listeners to miss function words.
- Speeding speech rate led listeners to perceive non-existent function words.
- Speech rate influenced perceived word boundaries and word count.
Conclusions:
- Listeners form expectancies based on speech rate.
- These expectancies shape the perception of words and boundaries.
- Findings explain robust speech recognition in distorted signals.
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