Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Representation and Processing of Vowel Contrasts

博士论文研究：元音对比的表示和处理

• 批准号: 2314478
• 负责人: Jie Zhang
• 金额: $ 1.84万
• 依托单位: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-15 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314478&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Representation; Processing

This doctoral dissertation project uses a series of speech recognition experiments to investigate how the characteristics of vowel sounds are stored in the mind and the role they play in speech comprehension. In order for listeners to comprehend spoken language, the mind must successfully match acoustic information that the listener hears to specific words they know. For example, a native English speaker must be sensitive to the difference in vowel sounds between the words BED and BAD to hear and retrieve the right word in their mind. By comparing the results of experiments in American English with another language, the project analyzes to what extent these vowel characteristics may be stored and processed in a language-specific fashion. As well as making important contributions to the field of psycholinguistics, this research has implications for the teaching of challenging vowel distinctions in the classroom for second language learners, particularly non-native learners of English and native English learners of other languages.In American English, the importance of the distinction between so-called 'tense' versus 'lax' vowel sounds, such as in the words 'beat' versus 'bit', is well known. However, it is unclear how English vowel tenseness is represented in the mind and the consequence this has on spoken word recognition. As for other languages, there is disagreement about whether certain vowel sounds are distinguished by tenseness, as in English, or by other types of vowel characteristics. The project uses a combination of 'cross-modal priming' tasks, in which listeners must recognize one word right after hearing a different one, and 'discrimination' tasks, in which listeners must identify whether two consecutive sounds/words were the same or different. These experiments provide evidence for the way the mind categorizes the characteristics of vowel sounds, as well as how these characteristics lead to the activation of different types of mental representation during speech comprehension: phonological (sound structure), morphological (word structure), and semantic (meaning).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该博士论文项目使用一系列语音识别实验来研究元音声音的特征如何存储在大脑中以及它们在语音理解中发挥的作用。为了让听众理解口语，大脑必须成功地将听众听到的声音信息与他们知道的特定单词相匹配。例如，以英语为母语的人必须对单词 BED 和 BAD 之间的元音差异敏感，才能在脑海中听到并检索到正确的单词。通过将美式英语与另一种语言的实验结果进行比较，该项目分析了这些元音特征可以在多大程度上以特定于语言的方式存储和处理。这项研究不仅为心理语言学领域做出了重要贡献，还对第二语言学习者，特别是非英语母语学习者和其他语言的母语英语学习者在课堂上教授具有挑战性的元音区别具有影响。区分所谓的“紧张”与“宽松”元音之间的重要性，例如单词“beat”与“bit”之间的区别，是众所周知的。然而，目前尚不清楚英语元音时态如何在大脑中表示以及这对口语单词识别的影响。至于其他语言，对于某些元音是通过时态来区分（如英语）还是通过其他类型的元音特征来区分，存在分歧。该项目结合了“跨模式启动”任务和“辨别”任务，其中听众必须在听到不同的单词后立即识别一个单词，而“辨别”任务中听众必须识别两个连续的声音/单词是否相同或不同。这些实验为大脑对元音声音特征进行分类的方式提供了证据，以及这些特征如何导致在语音理解过程中激活不同类型的心理表征：语音（声音结构）、形态（单词结构）和语义（含义）。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。