Research article summary (published 30 Dec 2003):

Effects of talker variability on perceptual learning of dialects.

Full Abstract

Two groups of listeners learned to categorize a set of unfamiliar talkers by dialect region using sentences selected from the TIMIT speech corpus. One group learned to categorize a single talker from each of six American English dialect regions. A second group learned to categorize three talkers from each dialect region. Following training, both groups were asked to categorize new talkers using the same categorization task. While the single-talker group was more accurate during initial training and test phases when familiar talkers produced the sentences, the three-talker group performed better on the generalization task with unfamiliar talkers. This cross-over effect in dialect categorization suggests that while talker variation during initial perceptual learning leads to more difficult learning of specific exemplars, exposure to intertalker variability facilitates robust perceptual learning and promotes better categorization performance of unfamiliar talkers. The results suggest that listeners encode and use acoustic-phonetic variability in speech to reliably perceive the dialect of unfamiliar talkers.

Author information

Author/s: Clopper, Cynthia G (CG); Pisoni, David B (DB);

Affiliation: Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. cclopper(-atsign-)indiana.edu

Grants: R01 DC00111 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Language and speech (Lang Speech), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2004-; vol 47 (issue Pt 3) : pp 207-39

Dates: Created 2005/02/08; Completed 2005/05/24; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 15697151, status: MEDLINE (last retrieved date: 2/18/2009)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MeSH Headings (categories) shown below.

Adult Analysis of Variance Humans Male Phonetics

Phonetics Speech - physiology Speech Acoustics Speech Discrimination Tests Speech Perception - physiology

Note: Bold headings indicate primary MeSH headings or qualifiers.

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