Predictive Timing in Speech Perception and Production

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Philip Hoole
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 315230532

The overall objective in this extension phase will be to further deepen our understanding of adaptive behavior and online processing of temporal information in speech. The first project phase (Phase 1) used real-time manipulation of the temporal properties of auditory feedback. It found stronger subject responses for perturbation of syllable codas compared to onsets; this was interpreted as evidence for greater malleability of motor plans for codas. A counterpart to this was found in subject-specific compensation patterns. All subjects were tested for an extensive battery of sensorimotor skills. Subjects showing greater compensation showed greater motor variability in synchronized tapping tasks (more compensation when motor plans are less strongly entrenched).We now aim to expand the range of stimulus manipulations for perturbation, and also to widen the sensorimotor profiles of participants by taking special populations into account, i.e. persons who stutter and musicians. Specific aims in 4 work-packages are:(1) In Phase 1 the perturbation was introduced gradually and systematically, becoming predictable for participants. Analysis focuses on adjustments to stored motor representations to counteract the perturbation. To complement this approach we will now use perturbations that are introduced unexpectedly. This taps into online monitoring processes as an utterance unfolds (rather than adaptive learning processes). We hypothesize that the perceptual salience of the perturbation now has more weight than the entrenchment of motor representations.(2) The paradigm of Phase 1 will be used to compare stuttering and non-stuttering participants, again focusing on a comparison of responses to perturbations in syllable onset vs. coda. The aim will be to determine whether the stuttering group simply shows an overall weaker response to auditory feedback manipulation (as some previous studies have indicated) or whether this group shows evidence of a specific processing deficit related to syllable onsets.(3) In Phase 1 we collected extensive data from children to young adults on sensorimotor skills (from duration discrimination to predictive timing tapping tasks). Moreover, all non-speech tasks had speech tasks as counterparts. The aim is now to analyse these tests from the developmental point of view to determine the extent to which different skills develop in parallel.(4) In the extension phase we aim to compare musicians and non-musicians to improve understanding of the extent and nature of adaptive behaviour. This emerges from the results above on the malleability of motor representations. This aspect has been little discussed hitherto for speech, but has received some attention in perturbation experiments with music-based stimuli. To achieve our overall aims we thus see explicit comparison of musicians and non-musicians for both speech and music-based stimuli as a particularly promising avenue.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Canada
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Simone Dalla Bella; Professorin Dr. Simone Falk