What information is necessary for speech categorization? Harnessing variability in the speech signal by integrating cues computed relative to expectations
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Issue Date
2011-04-01Author
McMurray, Bob
Jongman, Allard
Publisher
The American Psychological Association
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Most theories of categorization emphasize how continuous perceptual information is mapped to categories. However, equally important are the informational assumptions of a model, the type of information subserving this mapping. This is crucial in speech perception where the signal is variable and context dependent. This study assessed the informational assumptions of several models of speech categorization, in particular, the number of cues that are the basis of categorization and whether these cues represent the input veridically or have undergone compensation. We collected a corpus of 2,880 fricative productions (Jongman, Wayland, & Wong, 2000) spanning many talker and vowel contexts and measured 24 cues for each. A subset was also presented to listeners in an 8AFC phoneme categorization task. We then trained a common classification model based on logistic regression to categorize the fricative from the cue values and manipulated the information in the training set to contrast (a) models based on a small number of invariant cues, (b) models using all cues without compensation, and (c) models in which cues underwent compensation for contextual factors. Compensation was modeled by computing cues relative to expectations (C-CuRE), a new approach to compensation that preserves fine-grained detail in the signal. Only the compensation model achieved a similar accuracy to listeners and showed the same effects of context. Thus, even simple categorization metrics can overcome the variability in speech when sufficient information is available and compensation schemes like C-CuRE are employed.
Description
This is the author's accepted manuscript. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. The original publication is available at http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayrecord&uid=2011-05323-001.
ISSN
0033-295XCollections
Citation
McMurray, B., and Jongman, A. 2011. “What information is necessary for speech categorization? Harnessing variability in the speech signal by integrating cues computed relative to expectations.” Psychological Review 118, 219-246. http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022325
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