Dawn Behne - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Dawn Behne

Research paper thumbnail of Perception of audiovisual infant directed speech

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Dec 9, 2019

Infant perception often deals with audiovisual speech input and a first step in processing this i... more Infant perception often deals with audiovisual speech input and a first step in processing this input is to perceive both visual and auditory information. The speech directed to infants has special characteristics and may enhance visual aspects of speech. The current study was designed to explore the impact of visual enhancement in infant-directed speech (IDS) on audiovisual mismatch detection in a naturalistic setting. Twenty infants participated in an experiment with a visual fixation task conducted in participants' homes. Stimuli consisted of IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS) syllables with a plosive and the vowel /a:/, /i:/ or /u:/. These were either audiovisually congruent or incongruent. Infants looked longer at incongruent than congruent syllables and longer at IDS than ADS syllables, indicating that IDS and incongruent stimuli contain cues that can make audiovisual perception challenging and thereby attract infants' gaze.

Research paper thumbnail of The position of the amplitude peak as an acoustic correlate of stress in English and French

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 1990

Early discussions of the acoustic correlates of stress suggested that stressed syllables are prod... more Early discussions of the acoustic correlates of stress suggested that stressed syllables are produced with greater amplitude than unstressed S65

Research paper thumbnail of Acoustic characteristics of perceived vowel quantity and quality in English and Norwegian vowels

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Nov 1, 1997

In Norwegian and English, as in many languages, vowels can be characterized in terms of distincti... more In Norwegian and English, as in many languages, vowels can be characterized in terms of distinctive phonological vowel quantity and vowel quality. Norwegian is described as having phonological distinction between long and short vowels, whereas in English vowel quality is generally seen as more distinct. However, both vowel quantity and quality can acoustically be realized in vowel duration and the accompanying characteristic resonance of a vowel. The goal of this project is to examine the perceptual weight of vowel duration and the first two formant frequencies for Norwegians when hearing Norwegian vowels versus English vowels. Six sets of words based on three Norwegian vowel pairs and three English vowel pairs were resynthesized. The words in each set were resynthesized using the members of the pairs as the end points of a matrix with five degrees of vowel duration and five degrees of F1 and F2 adjustment. Based on judgments by native Norwegian listeners, results to date suggest that native listeners of Norwegian will be more perceptive to differences in vowel duration than to spectral characteristics. The results for the English and Norwegian vowels will be compared and discussed in terms of native language influence on vowel perception.

Research paper thumbnail of Changes in infant directed speech in the first six months

Infant and Child Development, 2006

ABSTRACT The Mother–Infant Phonetic Interaction model (MIPhI) predicts that, compared with adult ... more ABSTRACT The Mother–Infant Phonetic Interaction model (MIPhI) predicts that, compared with adult directed speech (ADS), in infant directed speech (IDS) vowels will be overspecified and consonants underspecified during the infants' first 6 months. In a longitudinal natural study, six mothers' ADS and IDS were recorded on 10 occasions during the first 6 months after their infants were born. Acoustic–phonetic measures, including the first two formant frequencies and duration for vowels and the duration of the fricative /s/, were used to test the MIPhI model with differences between IDS and ADS during the infants' first 6 months. Repeated measures analyses showed the fricative /s/ duration was stably longer in IDS, corresponding to an overspecification throughout the 6 months. The unexpected smaller vowel space for IDS than ADS was stably maintained over the six months, suggesting an underspecification of vowels. Vowel duration, which was generally longer in IDS than ADS, however, changed over time, decreasing in difference between IDS and ADS during month 3 and 4. Results invite adjustments to the MIPhI model, in particular related to infants' needs for perceptual enhancement of speech segments, and to the course of infant neurological and communicative development throughout the first 6 months. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research paper thumbnail of Mouth2audio: Intelligible Audio Synthesis from Videos with Distinctive Vowel Articulation

Social Science Research Network, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Effect of Semantic Context on the Perceptual Learning of Lexical Tone

ICPhS, 2011

Previous research has not determined whether the inclusion of lexical semantic information facili... more Previous research has not determined whether the inclusion of lexical semantic information facilitates or inhibits the learning of second language (L2) phonetic contrasts. The present study addresses this issue by comparing the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones with and without semantic contexts. Two groups of native English listeners with no lexical tone experience participated in a Mandarin tone training program where one ("No meaning") group received training with only phonetic tonal contrasts, while the other ("Meaning") group was additionally provided with semantic information. Results show that although both groups started comparably and improved significantly with training, the "No-meaning" trainees had significantly higher tone identification accuracy rates than the "Meaning" trainees after training. However, the inter-session tests with the training stimuli reveal the opposite pattern, where the Meaning group outperformed the No-meaning group. Together, these results indicate that, at the initial stage of tone learning, non-native listeners learn more efficiently by focusing on phonetic tonal distinctions, whereas remembering the meanings of tone words does not generalize well to tone category identification.

Research paper thumbnail of Perceived Audiovisual Simultaneity in Speech by Musicians and Nonmusicians: Preliminary Behavioral and Event-Related Potential (ERP) Findings

Research paper thumbnail of Does native language temporal experience transfer to audio-visual synchrony perception?

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Sep 1, 2018

The temporal alignment of what we hear and see is fundamental for the cognitive organization of i... more The temporal alignment of what we hear and see is fundamental for the cognitive organization of information from our environment. Research indicates that a perceiver's experience influences sensitivity to audio-visual (AV) synchrony. We theorize that experience that enhances sensitivity to speech sound distinctions in the temporal domain would enhance sensitivity in AV synchrony perception. With this basis, a perceiver whose native language (L1) involves duration-based phonemic distinctions would be expected to be more sensitive to AV synchrony in speech than for an L1 which has less use of temporal cues. In the current study, simultaneity judgment data for the syllable /ba/ were collected with 23 steps of AV alignments: from audio preceding the video (audio-lead) to the audio and video being physically aligned (synchronous) to video preceding the audio (video-lead). Two groups of participants differing in L1 experience with phonemic duration were included: native speakers of Norwegian (binary phonemic quantity distinction) and English (no phonemic quantity distinction). Preliminary results based on measures the audio-lead threshold (ALT) support the hypothesis that native language experience may influence broad mechanisms of timing, such as those moderating AV synchrony perception. Findings contribute to understanding the underpinnings of experience and AV synchrony perception.

Research paper thumbnail of Visual field advantage in the perception of audiovisual speech segments

AVSP, 2008

Research has shown that speech segment perception is predominantly a function of the left hemisph... more Research has shown that speech segment perception is predominantly a function of the left hemisphere. The aim of this study is to determine if the visual field in which visual speech is presented affects the audiovisual percept. Results show increased audiovisual fusion in the right visual field and exclude that the difference was a result of facial asymmetry. Findings indicate more efficient early audiovisual processing in the right visual field, likely associated with early left hemisphere brain functions for speech segments.

Research paper thumbnail of Perceived nativeness and sensitivity to temporal adjustments in speech

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Apr 1, 2005

Native Mandarin Chinese speakers productions of English consonant-vowel (CV) syllables have shown... more Native Mandarin Chinese speakers productions of English consonant-vowel (CV) syllables have shown syllable-internal temporal adjustments in the direction of native (English)-like CVs (Wang and Behne, 2004). The current study presents two experiments investigating whether these temporal adjustments affect perceived nativeness. For three production types (native-English, Chinese productions of English, native-Chinese), three syllable-internal timing patterns (English-like, Chinese-English-like, Chinese-like) were applied, resulting in nine stimuli types. Native English listeners judged how English-like each stimulus was on a 7-point scale. In the first experiment, production-types and timing patterns were randomized. Results show that listeners can reliably identify nativeness of the three productions, with Chinese productions of English perceived as intermediate to the native Chinese and native American English productions. Listeners also showed a tendency toward using timing within the CV to identify nativeness. In the second experiment the same materials were therefore blocked by production type. Results reveal the perceptual saliency of the temporal adjustments in nonnative productions. These findings support a view of L2 acquisition as a gradual process toward the target L2 (e.g., Caramazza et al., 1973). The current study extends this view, showing evidence that listeners can perceive the inter-language system, bearing the nature of both L1 and L2.

Research paper thumbnail of Identification of Swedish vowel quantity by pre‐adults

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 2001

Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native listeners shows that vowel d... more Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native listeners shows that vowel duration is a primary cue for identifying vowel quantity. However, when a vowel has a relatively long duration (e.g., due to its inherent duration, or its context), adult listeners may make use of both duration and spectra to identify vowel quantity. Use of the vowel spectrum in these special cases might be seen as the result of perceptual fine tuning to improve the processing efficiency in vowel identification. If so, we would expect a developmental change in how children use vowel duration and spectra to identify vowel quantity, with the use of vowel spectra as a cue coming relatively late. This investigation examines how young native listeners, from 9 to 15 years old, use vowel duration and F1-F2 to identify Swedish vowel quantities. For each of three vowel types, 100 /kVt/ words were resynthesized with ten degrees of vowel duration and ten degrees of F1 and F2 adjustment. Each child responded to a subset of these in a rhyming task. Results show a late developing ability to identify vowel quantity and trace the use of vowel duration and F1-F2 as perceptual cues to vowel quantity.

Research paper thumbnail of Experience-Based Probabilities Modulate Expectations in a Gender-Coded Artificial Language

Frontiers in Psychology, Aug 23, 2016

The current study combines artificial language learning with visual world eyetracking to investig... more The current study combines artificial language learning with visual world eyetracking to investigate acquisition of representations associating spoken words and visual referents using morphologically complex pseudowords. Pseudowords were constructed to consistently encode referential gender by means of suffixation for a set of imaginary figures that could be either male or female. During training, the frequency of exposure to pseudowords and their imaginary figure referents were manipulated such that a given word and its referent would be more likely to occur in either the masculine form or the feminine form, or both forms would be equally likely. Results show that these experience-based probabilities affect the formation of new representations to the extent that participants were faster at recognizing a referent whose gender was consistent with the induced expectation than a referent whose gender was inconsistent with this expectation. Disambiguating gender information available from the suffix did not mask the induced expectations. Eyetracking data provide additional evidence that such expectations surface during online lexical processing. Taken together, these findings indicate that experience-based information is accessible during the earliest stages of processing, and are consistent with the view that language comprehension depends on the activation of perceptual memory traces.

Research paper thumbnail of Perceived Swedish vowel quantity: effects of postvocalic consonant duration

Page 1. PERCEIVED SWEDISH VOWEL QUANTITY: EFFECTS OF POSTVOCALIC CONSONANT DURATION Dawn M. Behne... more Page 1. PERCEIVED SWEDISH VOWEL QUANTITY: EFFECTS OF POSTVOCALIC CONSONANT DURATION Dawn M. Behne†, Peter E. Czigler‡ and Kirk PH Sullivan‡ †Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N ...

Research paper thumbnail of Do gender differences in audio-visual benefit and visual influence in audio-visual speech perception emerge with age?

Frontiers in Psychology, Jul 16, 2015

Gender and age have been found to affect adults' audiovisual (AV) speech perception. However, res... more Gender and age have been found to affect adults' audiovisual (AV) speech perception. However, research on adult aging focuses on adults over 60 years, who have an increasing likelihood for cognitive and sensory decline, which may confound positive effects of age-related AV-experience and its interaction with gender. Observed age and gender differences in AV speech perception may also depend on measurement sensitivity and AV task difficulty. Consequently both AV benefit and visual influence were used to measure visual contribution for gender-balanced groups of young (20-30 years) and middle-aged adults (50-60 years) with task difficulty varied using AV syllables from different talkers in alternative auditory backgrounds. Females had better speech-reading performance than males. Whereas no gender differences in AV benefit or visual influence were observed for young adults, visually influenced responses were significantly greater for middle-aged females than middle-aged males. That speech-reading performance did not influence AV benefit may be explained by visual speech extraction and AV integration constituting independent abilities. Contrastingly, the gender difference in visually influenced responses in middle adulthood may reflect an experience-related shift in females' general AV perceptual strategy. Although young females' speech-reading proficiency may not readily contribute to greater visual influence, between young and middle-adulthood recurrent confirmation of the contribution of visual cues induced by speech-reading proficiency may gradually shift females AV perceptual strategy toward more visually dominated responses.

Research paper thumbnail of Audio-visual identification of place of articulation and voicing in white and babble noise

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jul 1, 2009

Research shows that noise and phonetic attributes influence the degree to which auditory and visu... more Research shows that noise and phonetic attributes influence the degree to which auditory and visual modalities are used in audiovisual speech perception ͑AVSP͒. Research has, however, mainly focused on white noise and single phonetic attributes, thus neglecting the more common babble noise and possible interactions between phonetic attributes. This study explores whether white and babble noise differentially influence AVSP and whether these differences depend on phonetic attributes. White and babble noise of 0 and −12 dB signal-to-noise ratio were added to congruent and incongruent audiovisual stop consonant-vowel stimuli. The audio ͑A͒ and video ͑V͒ of incongruent stimuli differed either in place of articulation ͑POA͒ or voicing. Responses from 15 young adults show that, compared to white noise, babble resulted in more audio responses for POA stimuli, and fewer for voicing stimuli. Voiced syllables received more audio responses than voiceless syllables. Results can be attributed to discrepancies in the acoustic spectra of both the noise and speech target. Voiced consonants may be more auditorily salient than voiceless consonants which are more spectrally similar to white noise. Visual cues contribute to identification of voicing, but only if the POA is visually salient and auditorily susceptible to the noise type.

Research paper thumbnail of Influence of native language phonetic system on audio-visual speech perception

Journal of Phonetics, Jul 1, 2009

This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects auditory-visual (AV) perception o... more This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects auditory-visual (AV) perception of nonnative (L2) speech. Korean, Mandarin and English perceivers were presented with English CV syllables containing fricatives with three places of articulation: labiodentals nonexistent in Korean, interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, and alveolars occurring in all three L1s. The stimuli were presented as auditory-only, visual-only, congruent AV and incongruent AV. Results show that for the labiodentals which are nonnative in Korean, the Koreans had lower accuracy for the visual domain than the English and the Mandarin perceivers, but they nevertheless achieved native-level perception in the auditory and AV domains. For the interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, while both nonnative groups had lower accuracy in the auditory domain than the native English group, they benefited from the visual information with improved performance in AV perception. Comparing the two nonnative groups, the Mandarin perceivers showed poorer auditory and AV identification for the interdentals and greater AV-fusion with the incongruent AV material than did the Koreans. These results indicate that nonnative perceivers are able to use visual speech information in L2 perception, although acquiring accurate use of the auditory and visual domains may not be similarly achieved across native groups, a process influenced by L1 experience.

Research paper thumbnail of Linguistic experience and audio-visual perception of non-native fricatives

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Sep 1, 2008

This study examined the effects of linguistic experience on audiovisual ͑AV͒ perception of non-na... more This study examined the effects of linguistic experience on audiovisual ͑AV͒ perception of non-native ͑L2͒ speech. Canadian English natives and Mandarin Chinese natives differing in degree of English exposure ͓long and short length of residence ͑LOR͒ in Canada͔ were presented with English fricatives of three visually distinct places of articulation: interdentals nonexistent in Mandarin and labiodentals and alveolars common in both languages. Stimuli were presented in quiet and in a café-noise background in four ways: audio only ͑A͒, visual only ͑V͒, congruent AV ͑AVc͒, and incongruent AV ͑AVi͒. Identification results showed that overall performance was better in the AVc than in the A or V condition and better in quiet than in café noise. While the Mandarin long LOR group approximated the native English patterns, the short LOR group showed poorer interdental identification, more reliance on visual information, and greater AV-fusion with the AVi materials, indicating the failure of L2 visual speech category formation with the short LOR non-natives and the positive effects of linguistic experience with the long LOR non-natives. These results point to an integrated network in AV speech processing as a function of linguistic background and provide evidence to extend auditory-based L2 speech learning theories to the visual domain.

Research paper thumbnail of Infant Directed Speech in Natural Interaction—Norwegian Vowel Quantity and Quality

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, May 1, 2005

Research paper thumbnail of Effect of native language experience on audio-visual perception of English fricatives by Korean and Mandarin natives

AVSP, 2007

This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects audiovisual (AV) perception of no... more This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects audiovisual (AV) perception of nonnative (L2) speech. Mandarin, Korean, and English perceivers were presented English CV syllables containing fricatives with 3 places of articulation: labiodentals nonexistent in Korean, interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, and alveolars occurring in all L1s. The stimuli were presented as: audio-only (A), visual-only (V), congruent AV, and incongruent AV. Results show that all groups performed better in the AV than A or V condition. The English perceivers outperformed the nonnatives. Mandarin perceivers relied more on V input, and greater AV integration with incongruent AV, whereas Koreans benefited more from A. These findings indicate that nonnatives had less effective AV integration than natives with sounds involving visually unfamiliar places of articulation. The nonnatives' AV processing was differentially influenced by L1 experience. Conversely, similarities across groups indicate possible perceptual universals. Together they point to an integrated network in speech processing across modalities and linguistic backgrounds.

Research paper thumbnail of Temporal effects on successive consonants in Swedish

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 1996

The duration of phonetic components in a syllable is known to be affected by the syllable’s relat... more The duration of phonetic components in a syllable is known to be affected by the syllable’s relative prominence, along with the number and articulatory nature of phonological segments in a word. This study addresses the durational effect of these factors on successive segments in Swedish consonant clusters. Ten native Swedish speakers were recorded producing monosyllabic and disyllabic target words which were either focused or not focused in a carrier phrase. Each word contained an /s/+stop cluster or stop+/s/ cluster in which the stop was /p,t/ or /k/. The durations of the /s/ frication and stop closure were measured. Results indicate that focus consistently increases the duration of a cluster and its constituents. In addition, little difference in closure duration was observed among /p,t,k/. Within disyllabic words, the cluster’s first segment, whether a stop or an /s/, was systematically longer than the second segment in both nonfocal and focal conditions. The reverse tendency was found for monosyllabic words; the cluster’s second segment was generally longer than the first segment in the focal condition, and no difference due to position in the cluster was observed for the nonfocal condition. These results are discussed in terms of the relative timing of successive consonants within clusters.

Research paper thumbnail of Perception of audiovisual infant directed speech

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Dec 9, 2019

Infant perception often deals with audiovisual speech input and a first step in processing this i... more Infant perception often deals with audiovisual speech input and a first step in processing this input is to perceive both visual and auditory information. The speech directed to infants has special characteristics and may enhance visual aspects of speech. The current study was designed to explore the impact of visual enhancement in infant-directed speech (IDS) on audiovisual mismatch detection in a naturalistic setting. Twenty infants participated in an experiment with a visual fixation task conducted in participants' homes. Stimuli consisted of IDS and adult-directed speech (ADS) syllables with a plosive and the vowel /a:/, /i:/ or /u:/. These were either audiovisually congruent or incongruent. Infants looked longer at incongruent than congruent syllables and longer at IDS than ADS syllables, indicating that IDS and incongruent stimuli contain cues that can make audiovisual perception challenging and thereby attract infants' gaze.

Research paper thumbnail of The position of the amplitude peak as an acoustic correlate of stress in English and French

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 1990

Early discussions of the acoustic correlates of stress suggested that stressed syllables are prod... more Early discussions of the acoustic correlates of stress suggested that stressed syllables are produced with greater amplitude than unstressed S65

Research paper thumbnail of Acoustic characteristics of perceived vowel quantity and quality in English and Norwegian vowels

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Nov 1, 1997

In Norwegian and English, as in many languages, vowels can be characterized in terms of distincti... more In Norwegian and English, as in many languages, vowels can be characterized in terms of distinctive phonological vowel quantity and vowel quality. Norwegian is described as having phonological distinction between long and short vowels, whereas in English vowel quality is generally seen as more distinct. However, both vowel quantity and quality can acoustically be realized in vowel duration and the accompanying characteristic resonance of a vowel. The goal of this project is to examine the perceptual weight of vowel duration and the first two formant frequencies for Norwegians when hearing Norwegian vowels versus English vowels. Six sets of words based on three Norwegian vowel pairs and three English vowel pairs were resynthesized. The words in each set were resynthesized using the members of the pairs as the end points of a matrix with five degrees of vowel duration and five degrees of F1 and F2 adjustment. Based on judgments by native Norwegian listeners, results to date suggest that native listeners of Norwegian will be more perceptive to differences in vowel duration than to spectral characteristics. The results for the English and Norwegian vowels will be compared and discussed in terms of native language influence on vowel perception.

Research paper thumbnail of Changes in infant directed speech in the first six months

Infant and Child Development, 2006

ABSTRACT The Mother–Infant Phonetic Interaction model (MIPhI) predicts that, compared with adult ... more ABSTRACT The Mother–Infant Phonetic Interaction model (MIPhI) predicts that, compared with adult directed speech (ADS), in infant directed speech (IDS) vowels will be overspecified and consonants underspecified during the infants' first 6 months. In a longitudinal natural study, six mothers' ADS and IDS were recorded on 10 occasions during the first 6 months after their infants were born. Acoustic–phonetic measures, including the first two formant frequencies and duration for vowels and the duration of the fricative /s/, were used to test the MIPhI model with differences between IDS and ADS during the infants' first 6 months. Repeated measures analyses showed the fricative /s/ duration was stably longer in IDS, corresponding to an overspecification throughout the 6 months. The unexpected smaller vowel space for IDS than ADS was stably maintained over the six months, suggesting an underspecification of vowels. Vowel duration, which was generally longer in IDS than ADS, however, changed over time, decreasing in difference between IDS and ADS during month 3 and 4. Results invite adjustments to the MIPhI model, in particular related to infants' needs for perceptual enhancement of speech segments, and to the course of infant neurological and communicative development throughout the first 6 months. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research paper thumbnail of Mouth2audio: Intelligible Audio Synthesis from Videos with Distinctive Vowel Articulation

Social Science Research Network, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Effect of Semantic Context on the Perceptual Learning of Lexical Tone

ICPhS, 2011

Previous research has not determined whether the inclusion of lexical semantic information facili... more Previous research has not determined whether the inclusion of lexical semantic information facilitates or inhibits the learning of second language (L2) phonetic contrasts. The present study addresses this issue by comparing the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones with and without semantic contexts. Two groups of native English listeners with no lexical tone experience participated in a Mandarin tone training program where one ("No meaning") group received training with only phonetic tonal contrasts, while the other ("Meaning") group was additionally provided with semantic information. Results show that although both groups started comparably and improved significantly with training, the "No-meaning" trainees had significantly higher tone identification accuracy rates than the "Meaning" trainees after training. However, the inter-session tests with the training stimuli reveal the opposite pattern, where the Meaning group outperformed the No-meaning group. Together, these results indicate that, at the initial stage of tone learning, non-native listeners learn more efficiently by focusing on phonetic tonal distinctions, whereas remembering the meanings of tone words does not generalize well to tone category identification.

Research paper thumbnail of Perceived Audiovisual Simultaneity in Speech by Musicians and Nonmusicians: Preliminary Behavioral and Event-Related Potential (ERP) Findings

Research paper thumbnail of Does native language temporal experience transfer to audio-visual synchrony perception?

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Sep 1, 2018

The temporal alignment of what we hear and see is fundamental for the cognitive organization of i... more The temporal alignment of what we hear and see is fundamental for the cognitive organization of information from our environment. Research indicates that a perceiver's experience influences sensitivity to audio-visual (AV) synchrony. We theorize that experience that enhances sensitivity to speech sound distinctions in the temporal domain would enhance sensitivity in AV synchrony perception. With this basis, a perceiver whose native language (L1) involves duration-based phonemic distinctions would be expected to be more sensitive to AV synchrony in speech than for an L1 which has less use of temporal cues. In the current study, simultaneity judgment data for the syllable /ba/ were collected with 23 steps of AV alignments: from audio preceding the video (audio-lead) to the audio and video being physically aligned (synchronous) to video preceding the audio (video-lead). Two groups of participants differing in L1 experience with phonemic duration were included: native speakers of Norwegian (binary phonemic quantity distinction) and English (no phonemic quantity distinction). Preliminary results based on measures the audio-lead threshold (ALT) support the hypothesis that native language experience may influence broad mechanisms of timing, such as those moderating AV synchrony perception. Findings contribute to understanding the underpinnings of experience and AV synchrony perception.

Research paper thumbnail of Visual field advantage in the perception of audiovisual speech segments

AVSP, 2008

Research has shown that speech segment perception is predominantly a function of the left hemisph... more Research has shown that speech segment perception is predominantly a function of the left hemisphere. The aim of this study is to determine if the visual field in which visual speech is presented affects the audiovisual percept. Results show increased audiovisual fusion in the right visual field and exclude that the difference was a result of facial asymmetry. Findings indicate more efficient early audiovisual processing in the right visual field, likely associated with early left hemisphere brain functions for speech segments.

Research paper thumbnail of Perceived nativeness and sensitivity to temporal adjustments in speech

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Apr 1, 2005

Native Mandarin Chinese speakers productions of English consonant-vowel (CV) syllables have shown... more Native Mandarin Chinese speakers productions of English consonant-vowel (CV) syllables have shown syllable-internal temporal adjustments in the direction of native (English)-like CVs (Wang and Behne, 2004). The current study presents two experiments investigating whether these temporal adjustments affect perceived nativeness. For three production types (native-English, Chinese productions of English, native-Chinese), three syllable-internal timing patterns (English-like, Chinese-English-like, Chinese-like) were applied, resulting in nine stimuli types. Native English listeners judged how English-like each stimulus was on a 7-point scale. In the first experiment, production-types and timing patterns were randomized. Results show that listeners can reliably identify nativeness of the three productions, with Chinese productions of English perceived as intermediate to the native Chinese and native American English productions. Listeners also showed a tendency toward using timing within the CV to identify nativeness. In the second experiment the same materials were therefore blocked by production type. Results reveal the perceptual saliency of the temporal adjustments in nonnative productions. These findings support a view of L2 acquisition as a gradual process toward the target L2 (e.g., Caramazza et al., 1973). The current study extends this view, showing evidence that listeners can perceive the inter-language system, bearing the nature of both L1 and L2.

Research paper thumbnail of Identification of Swedish vowel quantity by pre‐adults

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 2001

Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native listeners shows that vowel d... more Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native listeners shows that vowel duration is a primary cue for identifying vowel quantity. However, when a vowel has a relatively long duration (e.g., due to its inherent duration, or its context), adult listeners may make use of both duration and spectra to identify vowel quantity. Use of the vowel spectrum in these special cases might be seen as the result of perceptual fine tuning to improve the processing efficiency in vowel identification. If so, we would expect a developmental change in how children use vowel duration and spectra to identify vowel quantity, with the use of vowel spectra as a cue coming relatively late. This investigation examines how young native listeners, from 9 to 15 years old, use vowel duration and F1-F2 to identify Swedish vowel quantities. For each of three vowel types, 100 /kVt/ words were resynthesized with ten degrees of vowel duration and ten degrees of F1 and F2 adjustment. Each child responded to a subset of these in a rhyming task. Results show a late developing ability to identify vowel quantity and trace the use of vowel duration and F1-F2 as perceptual cues to vowel quantity.

Research paper thumbnail of Experience-Based Probabilities Modulate Expectations in a Gender-Coded Artificial Language

Frontiers in Psychology, Aug 23, 2016

The current study combines artificial language learning with visual world eyetracking to investig... more The current study combines artificial language learning with visual world eyetracking to investigate acquisition of representations associating spoken words and visual referents using morphologically complex pseudowords. Pseudowords were constructed to consistently encode referential gender by means of suffixation for a set of imaginary figures that could be either male or female. During training, the frequency of exposure to pseudowords and their imaginary figure referents were manipulated such that a given word and its referent would be more likely to occur in either the masculine form or the feminine form, or both forms would be equally likely. Results show that these experience-based probabilities affect the formation of new representations to the extent that participants were faster at recognizing a referent whose gender was consistent with the induced expectation than a referent whose gender was inconsistent with this expectation. Disambiguating gender information available from the suffix did not mask the induced expectations. Eyetracking data provide additional evidence that such expectations surface during online lexical processing. Taken together, these findings indicate that experience-based information is accessible during the earliest stages of processing, and are consistent with the view that language comprehension depends on the activation of perceptual memory traces.

Research paper thumbnail of Perceived Swedish vowel quantity: effects of postvocalic consonant duration

Page 1. PERCEIVED SWEDISH VOWEL QUANTITY: EFFECTS OF POSTVOCALIC CONSONANT DURATION Dawn M. Behne... more Page 1. PERCEIVED SWEDISH VOWEL QUANTITY: EFFECTS OF POSTVOCALIC CONSONANT DURATION Dawn M. Behne†, Peter E. Czigler‡ and Kirk PH Sullivan‡ †Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N ...

Research paper thumbnail of Do gender differences in audio-visual benefit and visual influence in audio-visual speech perception emerge with age?

Frontiers in Psychology, Jul 16, 2015

Gender and age have been found to affect adults' audiovisual (AV) speech perception. However, res... more Gender and age have been found to affect adults' audiovisual (AV) speech perception. However, research on adult aging focuses on adults over 60 years, who have an increasing likelihood for cognitive and sensory decline, which may confound positive effects of age-related AV-experience and its interaction with gender. Observed age and gender differences in AV speech perception may also depend on measurement sensitivity and AV task difficulty. Consequently both AV benefit and visual influence were used to measure visual contribution for gender-balanced groups of young (20-30 years) and middle-aged adults (50-60 years) with task difficulty varied using AV syllables from different talkers in alternative auditory backgrounds. Females had better speech-reading performance than males. Whereas no gender differences in AV benefit or visual influence were observed for young adults, visually influenced responses were significantly greater for middle-aged females than middle-aged males. That speech-reading performance did not influence AV benefit may be explained by visual speech extraction and AV integration constituting independent abilities. Contrastingly, the gender difference in visually influenced responses in middle adulthood may reflect an experience-related shift in females' general AV perceptual strategy. Although young females' speech-reading proficiency may not readily contribute to greater visual influence, between young and middle-adulthood recurrent confirmation of the contribution of visual cues induced by speech-reading proficiency may gradually shift females AV perceptual strategy toward more visually dominated responses.

Research paper thumbnail of Audio-visual identification of place of articulation and voicing in white and babble noise

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jul 1, 2009

Research shows that noise and phonetic attributes influence the degree to which auditory and visu... more Research shows that noise and phonetic attributes influence the degree to which auditory and visual modalities are used in audiovisual speech perception ͑AVSP͒. Research has, however, mainly focused on white noise and single phonetic attributes, thus neglecting the more common babble noise and possible interactions between phonetic attributes. This study explores whether white and babble noise differentially influence AVSP and whether these differences depend on phonetic attributes. White and babble noise of 0 and −12 dB signal-to-noise ratio were added to congruent and incongruent audiovisual stop consonant-vowel stimuli. The audio ͑A͒ and video ͑V͒ of incongruent stimuli differed either in place of articulation ͑POA͒ or voicing. Responses from 15 young adults show that, compared to white noise, babble resulted in more audio responses for POA stimuli, and fewer for voicing stimuli. Voiced syllables received more audio responses than voiceless syllables. Results can be attributed to discrepancies in the acoustic spectra of both the noise and speech target. Voiced consonants may be more auditorily salient than voiceless consonants which are more spectrally similar to white noise. Visual cues contribute to identification of voicing, but only if the POA is visually salient and auditorily susceptible to the noise type.

Research paper thumbnail of Influence of native language phonetic system on audio-visual speech perception

Journal of Phonetics, Jul 1, 2009

This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects auditory-visual (AV) perception o... more This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects auditory-visual (AV) perception of nonnative (L2) speech. Korean, Mandarin and English perceivers were presented with English CV syllables containing fricatives with three places of articulation: labiodentals nonexistent in Korean, interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, and alveolars occurring in all three L1s. The stimuli were presented as auditory-only, visual-only, congruent AV and incongruent AV. Results show that for the labiodentals which are nonnative in Korean, the Koreans had lower accuracy for the visual domain than the English and the Mandarin perceivers, but they nevertheless achieved native-level perception in the auditory and AV domains. For the interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, while both nonnative groups had lower accuracy in the auditory domain than the native English group, they benefited from the visual information with improved performance in AV perception. Comparing the two nonnative groups, the Mandarin perceivers showed poorer auditory and AV identification for the interdentals and greater AV-fusion with the incongruent AV material than did the Koreans. These results indicate that nonnative perceivers are able to use visual speech information in L2 perception, although acquiring accurate use of the auditory and visual domains may not be similarly achieved across native groups, a process influenced by L1 experience.

Research paper thumbnail of Linguistic experience and audio-visual perception of non-native fricatives

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Sep 1, 2008

This study examined the effects of linguistic experience on audiovisual ͑AV͒ perception of non-na... more This study examined the effects of linguistic experience on audiovisual ͑AV͒ perception of non-native ͑L2͒ speech. Canadian English natives and Mandarin Chinese natives differing in degree of English exposure ͓long and short length of residence ͑LOR͒ in Canada͔ were presented with English fricatives of three visually distinct places of articulation: interdentals nonexistent in Mandarin and labiodentals and alveolars common in both languages. Stimuli were presented in quiet and in a café-noise background in four ways: audio only ͑A͒, visual only ͑V͒, congruent AV ͑AVc͒, and incongruent AV ͑AVi͒. Identification results showed that overall performance was better in the AVc than in the A or V condition and better in quiet than in café noise. While the Mandarin long LOR group approximated the native English patterns, the short LOR group showed poorer interdental identification, more reliance on visual information, and greater AV-fusion with the AVi materials, indicating the failure of L2 visual speech category formation with the short LOR non-natives and the positive effects of linguistic experience with the long LOR non-natives. These results point to an integrated network in AV speech processing as a function of linguistic background and provide evidence to extend auditory-based L2 speech learning theories to the visual domain.

Research paper thumbnail of Infant Directed Speech in Natural Interaction—Norwegian Vowel Quantity and Quality

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, May 1, 2005

Research paper thumbnail of Effect of native language experience on audio-visual perception of English fricatives by Korean and Mandarin natives

AVSP, 2007

This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects audiovisual (AV) perception of no... more This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects audiovisual (AV) perception of nonnative (L2) speech. Mandarin, Korean, and English perceivers were presented English CV syllables containing fricatives with 3 places of articulation: labiodentals nonexistent in Korean, interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, and alveolars occurring in all L1s. The stimuli were presented as: audio-only (A), visual-only (V), congruent AV, and incongruent AV. Results show that all groups performed better in the AV than A or V condition. The English perceivers outperformed the nonnatives. Mandarin perceivers relied more on V input, and greater AV integration with incongruent AV, whereas Koreans benefited more from A. These findings indicate that nonnatives had less effective AV integration than natives with sounds involving visually unfamiliar places of articulation. The nonnatives' AV processing was differentially influenced by L1 experience. Conversely, similarities across groups indicate possible perceptual universals. Together they point to an integrated network in speech processing across modalities and linguistic backgrounds.

Research paper thumbnail of Temporal effects on successive consonants in Swedish

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 1996

The duration of phonetic components in a syllable is known to be affected by the syllable’s relat... more The duration of phonetic components in a syllable is known to be affected by the syllable’s relative prominence, along with the number and articulatory nature of phonological segments in a word. This study addresses the durational effect of these factors on successive segments in Swedish consonant clusters. Ten native Swedish speakers were recorded producing monosyllabic and disyllabic target words which were either focused or not focused in a carrier phrase. Each word contained an /s/+stop cluster or stop+/s/ cluster in which the stop was /p,t/ or /k/. The durations of the /s/ frication and stop closure were measured. Results indicate that focus consistently increases the duration of a cluster and its constituents. In addition, little difference in closure duration was observed among /p,t,k/. Within disyllabic words, the cluster’s first segment, whether a stop or an /s/, was systematically longer than the second segment in both nonfocal and focal conditions. The reverse tendency was found for monosyllabic words; the cluster’s second segment was generally longer than the first segment in the focal condition, and no difference due to position in the cluster was observed for the nonfocal condition. These results are discussed in terms of the relative timing of successive consonants within clusters.