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Some properties of auditory memory for rapid formant transitions
1University College London, Gower Street, WC IE 6BT, London, England.
Memory & Cognition
|November 9, 2013
Summary
Auditory memory for speech sounds persists briefly, influencing phonemic judgments. This memory preserves acoustic details within categories, affecting reaction times in speech perception tasks.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Auditory Perception
- Speech Processing
Background:
- Understanding speech perception involves how the brain processes sequential auditory information.
- Investigating the role of acoustic memory in phonemic discrimination is crucial for speech processing models.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the persistence of auditory memory for speech sounds.
- To determine how acoustic information influences phonemic judgments.
- To explore the interaction between auditory memory and phonemic decisions.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments involving sequential syllable presentation.
- Subjects judged phonemic identity of syllable pairs differing in stop consonant place of articulation.
- Reaction time measures were used, with variations in stimulus onset asynchrony, interposition stimuli, and dichotic presentation.
Main Results:
- Faster "same" responses to acoustically identical pairs than phonemically identical but acoustically distinct pairs within 400 ms.
- Auditory memory advantage persisted with a tone interposition but was eliminated by a vowel interposition.
- Right-ear advantage in a dichotic task was modulated by the compatibility between auditory memory comparisons and phonemic decisions.
Conclusions:
- Auditory memory preserves acoustic details of speech sounds, particularly within-category distinctions.
- This auditory trace influences phonemic decisions, especially at short stimulus intervals.
- The interaction between auditory memory and phonemic processing is complex and sensitive to intervening stimuli and task demands.
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