Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

The neural implementation of contextual influences in speech perception

Objective

Human listeners can perceive speech quite effortlessly, although it is, computationally, a very challenging task. An important reason why humans perform so well is because they make use of acoustic information that is available in the context. Such contextual information is useful because it provides a listener with information about a speaker's voice properties and his or her speaking rate. Although the influence of context on speech perception was noted decades ago and has been extensively investigated behaviourally, we know little about the underlying neural mechanisms, and the functional levels at which such influences operate remain hotly debated. Recently, the development of a technique that is largely novel to the language sciences, intracranial recordings (electrocorticography; ECoG), has started to provide important insights into the mechanisms underlying human speech perception. In the proposed project I will use this method to unravel the neural mechanisms by which human listeners manage to make use of contextual information in speech perception, focussing on three known perceptual normalization mechanisms. For each of these, I will determine whether they operate at a pre-categorical or at a categorical level of processing. In addition, the project will directly address the role of the posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus as a possible mapper of spectral representations onto speech sound categories. For the implementation of the project, I will spend 2 years at the University of California at Berkeley, USA, to gain experience with the highly specialized analysis techniques necessary for the analysis of ECoG measures, and work at the Donders Institute at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, during the third year. The proposed research programme bridges between the fields of linguistics and auditory neuroscience.

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT
EU contribution
€ 259 293,30
Address
HOUTLAAN 4
6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands

See on map

Region
Oost-Nederland Gelderland Arnhem/Nijmegen
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Petra Ten Have (Ms.)
Links
Total cost
No data