Psych of Language Lab 2: Speech Perception: Perceiving Words out of Context

In this lab, you will hear 34 examples of words that have been excised (using a computer waveform editing program) from conversational speech. Although the original conversations were very easy to understand, you will discover that single words are very short acoustic phenomena, and that they are difficult to process out of their original context. You will hear each word 3 times. Try to guess what word you have heard (write something down, even if you are not sure). This exercise if similar to one carried out by Pollack & Pickett (1963). (Do NOT look at the answers ahead of time. Doing so defeats the purpose of the lab.)

1. ____________________________ 18. ____________________________

2. ____________________________ 19. ____________________________

3. ____________________________ 20. ____________________________

4. ____________________________ 21. ____________________________

5. ____________________________ 22. ____________________________

6. ____________________________ 23. ____________________________

7. ____________________________ 24. ____________________________

8. ____________________________ 25. ____________________________

9. ____________________________ 26. ____________________________

10. ____________________________ 27. ____________________________

11. ____________________________ 28. ____________________________

12. ____________________________ 29. ____________________________

13. ____________________________ 30. ____________________________

14. ____________________________ 31. ____________________________

15. ____________________________ 32. ____________________________

16. ____________________________ 33. ____________________________

17. ____________________________ 34. ____________________________

The identity of each of the 34 words is given on the last sheet of this handout. (Do NOT look at the answers ahead of time. Doing so defeats the purpose of the lab.) Next to each of your answers, write down what the word was.

A chart of English consonants (with example words) can be found at the following URL

http://www.uoregon.edu/~l150web/conson.html

A chart of English vowels (with example words) can be found at the following URL

http://www.uoregon.edu/~l150web/vowel.html

Answer the following questions.

1. Do the words that you correctly identified share any traits? Consider the type of word (lexical content words like nouns and verbs versus grammatical function words like auxiliary verbs and prepositions). Consider phonological traits (e.g., words with stop consonants, fricatives, affricates, glides).

2. Did you make any systematic errors that seem to be based on phonological traits (e.g., omitting word initial/final phonemes; systematically confusing certain types of consonants for others; etc.)?

3. Are there some sounds that you were better at identifying than other sounds (e.g., certain types of consonants more than others; certain types of vowels more than others; word initial/final phonemes; vowels versus consonants)?

4. Some words may not have sounded like words at all, but rather like fast noise bursts. Words with consonants with very short embedded vowels (< 50 msec) are often perceived this way. Identify any words that you think might qualify.

5. For the words that were presented more than once (e.g., box, can, go, etc.), did you guess the same word each time? If not, what factors might have caused you to guess different words on different trials? (Hint: think about the things we talked about in class with respect to 'the lack of invariance problem' in speech perception.)

6. In fact, the words were taken from a conversation between a mother and her one-year old child. Now that you know this, are there any indications that these words came from child directed speech? [Hint: think about how mothers talk differently to their young children than to other adults.]

Lab 2: Speech Perception: Words Taken out of Context

1. like

2. at

3. home

4. box

5. for

6. get

7. phone

8. put

9. hand

10. box

11. tape

12. don't

13. nice

14. stay

15. down

16. there

17. see

18. box

19. toys

20. books

21. doll

22. comb

23. ball

24. have

25. door

26. can

27. go

28. go

29. shoes

30. books

31. can

32. sit

33. floor

34. play