Articulatory compensation for low-pass filtered formant-altered auditory feedback

Area of Science:

• Speech production and perception
• Auditory neuroscience
• Speech motor control

Background:

• Auditory feedback is vital for stable speech articulation.
• Formant-altered auditory feedback (AAF) experiments demonstrate this, perturbing F1 and F2.
• The role of frequencies above F2 in articulatory control remains unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the contribution of high-frequency auditory feedback to speech motor control.
• Examine how low-pass filtering affects compensatory responses in AAF.
• Explore the relationship between speech characteristics and auditory error correction.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a formant-altered auditory feedback (AAF) experiment using a low-pass filter.
• Varied cutoff frequencies (3, 4, and 8 kHz) to manipulate auditory feedback.
• Utilized a neurocomputational model (SimpleDIVA) for simulation and analysis.

Main Results:

• Compensatory response deviations were significantly larger with a 3 kHz cutoff compared to 4 and 8 kHz.
• The 3 kHz condition showed correlations between response deviation, fundamental frequency, and spectral tilt.
• Neurocomputational model simulations indicated increased feedforward learning rates with decreased cutoff frequencies.

Conclusions:

• High-frequency components of auditory feedback are involved in generating corrective motor commands.
• Auditory error detection and correction mechanisms rely on a broader spectral range than previously assumed.
• These findings advance our understanding of auditory-motor integration in speech.