Speech Comprehension

• How is speech produced and processed in the brain?

  Vocal cords and mouth produce sound waves, which are captured by the ear and processed as phonemes in the brain.
• What is the process of speech comprehension as described in the study material?

  Listeners access phonemes, which combine to form words, and then process these words to understand sentences.
• What does categorical perception mean in the context of phoneme perception?

  Categorical perception means that we hear subtly different sounds as the same phoneme and cannot distinguish between them.
• What is the McGurk Effect and how does it demonstrate the interaction of audio and visual information?

  The McGurk Effect shows that hearing is affected by seeing, as subjects reported hearing a different phoneme when the audio and visual inputs were mismatched.
• What is speech segmentation?

  Speech segmentation is the process of extracting words from a continuous flow of sound.
• How can speech segmentation be demonstrated through spoken sentences?

  By comparing sentences that sound similar but have different meanings, listeners can discern differences in speech segmentation.
• What is cross-modal priming in cognitive psychology?

  Cross-modal priming is when hearing one word aids the recognition of a subsequent visual word.
• What do "ghost" words refer to in the context of cross-modal priming?

  "Ghost" words are embedded words that become temporarily active but are quickly inhibited by the activation of the correct word.
• What is the phoneme restoration effect as demonstrated by Warren (1970)?

  The phoneme restoration effect occurs when subjects fail to notice a missing phoneme replaced by a cough in a spoken sentence.
• How does context influence the phoneme restoration effect according to Warren & Warren (1970)?

  Context helps disambiguate the target word even when a phoneme is missing, allowing subjects to understand the sentence.
• What did Samuels (1981, 1987, 1990) investigate regarding phoneme restoration?

  Samuels investigated how context influences listeners' perception of words and decisions about corrupted words.
• What conclusion did Samuels reach about lexical and sentential disambiguation?

  Samuels concluded that lexical disambiguation directly affects phoneme perception, while sentential disambiguation affects post-perceptual processes.
• What is the purpose of computational models in speech processing?

  Computational models are designed to mimic the workings of cognitive systems in speech processing.
• What is the name of the influential computer program developed by Elman & McClelland in 1998?

  The program is called TRACE.
• How do phonemes activate word candidates in the TRACE model?

  Phonemes activate word candidates that compete with each other, and the winner completes the missing phoneme information.
• How does the TRACE model process embedded words?

  Phonemes are processed one at a time, activating candidate words that compete, and the winner is selected while competitors are inhibited.
• What are the key factors influencing speech comprehension as summarized in the study material?

  Phoneme perception is categorical, speech segmentation involves determining word boundaries, and context influences both phoneme and word perception.
• What is the phenomenon of hearing "satanic messages" when playing music backwards attributed to?

  It is attributed to the use of top-down knowledge to project meaning onto ambiguous sounds.
• What is the process of speech segmentation?

  • Speech is a continuous flow of sound.
  • It occurs rapidly, up to 10 phonemes per second.
  • Listeners must extract sequences of lexical items (words) from this stream.
• What does cross-modal priming demonstrate about word perception?

  • Hearing one word can aid recognition of a subsequent visual word.
  • It shows the interaction between auditory and visual processing.
  • It highlights the cognitive processes involved in word recognition.