Title: This material is based upon work supported by NIH under Grant No. F32MH68204-01A1.
1The effect of experience on the perception and
representation of dialects
Meghan Sumner Stony Brook University University
of California, Berkeley
This material is based upon work supported by NIH
under Grant No. F32MH68204-01A1.
2The basic questions
- How do listeners accommodate the variation found
in the speech signal? - What representations are used to perceive and
understand speech? - What is the effect of experience on perception
and representation?
3The basic questions
- How do listeners accommodate the variation found
in the speech signal? - Is a surface pattern generalization made across
dialectal variants? - Are all variants equally able to map to meaning?
- What representations are used to perceive and
understand speech? - What is the effect of experience on perception
and representation?
4The basic questions
- How do listeners accommodate the variation found
in the speech signal? - What representations are used to perceive and
understand speech? - What is the effect of experience on perception
and representation?
5The basic questions
- How do listeners accommodate the variation found
in the speech signal? - What representations are used to perceive and
understand speech? - In the long-term, are variants mapped to a single
abstract representation, or to individual,
exemplar representations? - What is the effect of experience on perception
and representation?
6The basic questions
- How do listeners accommodate the variation found
in the speech signal? - What representations are used to perceive and
understand speech? - What is the effect of experience on perception
and representation?
7The basic questions
- How do listeners accommodate the variation found
in the speech signal? - What representations are used to perceive and
understand speech? - What is the effect of experience on perception
and representation? - Does experience with a particular dialect affect
perception and representation?
8How can dialects help?
- Consider slender
- Variation
- Compare cross-dialectal variants in immediate and
long-term tasks - slend-er vs. slend-?
- Experience
- Control participant experience with a particular
dialect - Compare r-full forms of General American (GA)
with r-less forms of New York City dialect (NYC)
using psycholinguistic tasks - GA participants who do not r-drop or exhibit
other regionally-marked characteristics
9What can priming tasks tell us?
- Form priming Do listeners generalize a pattern
for cross-dialectal variants independent of
dialect? - How well does slend-er prime an identical item
slend-er or a cross-dialect item slend-?? - Semantic priming Are cross-dialectal variants
mapped onto by meaning by listeners independent
of dialect? - Is slend-? as effective in activating thin as
slend-er? - Long-term repetition priming Are
cross-dialectal variants mapped onto a single
abstract representation, or stored as individual
concrete, or exemplar, representations? - Does slend-er exhibit the same level of identity
priming after 20 minutes as slend-??
Immediate processing
Long-term representation
10The effect of experience Participants
- Post-experiment interview questionnaire
- Interview Productive r-dropping, yes or no?
- Questionnaire
- Born in what city, state, country (participants,
parents, grandparents) - Languages spoken (participants, parents,
grandparents) - Other locations lived (including dates)
- 3 listener populations
- Needed 144 participants, ran 207
- Some exclusion criteria
- Lived outside NYC area, bilingual, not 1st
semester SB students
11Three populations
- GA
- Never lived in the NYC/Tri-State area, or any
other r-dropping region - First-semester Stony Brook students (run in 1st
month on campus) - NYC R-less
- Lifelong NYC-area residents
- Prominent r-dropping
- NYC R-full
- Lifelong NYC-area residents
- No r-dropping
Whats the difference? 96 of R-less listeners
parents and grandparents are NYC natives
3 of R-full listeners parents and/or
grandparents are NYC natives
12Familiar voices facilitate processing
- Stimuli created with FOUR speakers
- Primes produced by two females (one GA, one NYC)
- Targets produced by two males (one GA, one NYC)
13Experiment 1 Form priming
- Do listeners generalize a pattern for cross
dialectal variants independent of dialect?
Typical trial Auditory prime-target pairs
separated by a short interval Lexical decision
made for targets
Prime ISI Target Response (GA Voice
1) (GA Voice 2) runn-er runn-er
Word 100ms g?gi g?gi Pseudoword
14Experiment 1 Form priming design
- Four conditions
-
- Condition Related Prime Target Control Prime
- GA GA runn-er runn-er bak-er
- NYC GA run? runn-er bak-?
- GA NYC runn-er run? bak-er
- NYC NYC run? run? bak-?
- 48 participants (16 for each population)
- 160 er final words
- No item or variant presented in more than 1 trial
- Counterbalanced lists
- Fillers avoid response bias
1. 2. 3. 4.
GA Identity NYC Identity
15Experiment 1 Form priming predictions
- If pattern between variants is internalized
- Priming in all conditions, strongest in identity
conditions
- If pattern between variants is internalized
- Priming in all conditions, strongest in identity
conditions - If pattern not internalized (arbitrary or new)
- Benefit for within-dialect variants
- If pattern between variants is internalized
- Priming in all conditions, strongest in identity
conditions - If pattern not internalized (arbitrary or new)
- Benefit for within-dialect variants
- If experience with a variation is critical
- Differences among three listener groups
- e.g., Difference between NYC R-Less and GA in
facilitation of NYC targets
16Experiment 1 Form priming results
- NYC R-Less
- Strong identity priming in both dialects
- Reduced variant priming
- NYC R-Full
- Similar to R-Less participants
- Exposure facilitates processing
- GA
- Priming only for GA targets
- Surface variation not internalized
Short-term mapping between all variants for NYC
participants No mapping to NYC variants for
GA Lack of experience has clear processing cost
17Experiment 2 Semantic Priming
- Do all variants facilitate the recognition of a
semantically-related target?
Typical trial Auditory prime-target pairs
separated by a short interval Lexical decision
made for targets
Prime ISI Target Response (GA Voice 1) (GA
Voice 2) slend-er thin Word 100ms bo??
? guggy Pseudoword
18Experiment 2 Semantic priming design
- Four conditions
- Condition Related Prime Target Control
- 1. GA GA slend-er (GA voice 1) thin (GA
voice 2) filt-er - 2. NYC GA slend? thin filt?
- 3. GA NYC slend-er thin filt-er
- 4. NYC NYC slend? (NYC voice 1) thin (NYC
voice 2) filt? - 48 participants (16 for each population)
- 160 er final words and semantically-related
targets - Targets chosen via large-scale mass testing
experiment - No item or variant presented in more than 1 trial
- Fillers included to avoid response biases
19Experiment 2 Semantic priming predictions
If non-dialect variants do not activate
semantically-related items
- Native dialect primes should facilitate
recognition of related targets - Non-dialect primes should not yield facilitation
- If lack of exposure prohibits lexical activation
for variants - Only GA primes should facilitate lexical
activation for GA listeners (Cost) - All variant primes should facilitate lexical
activation for NYC listeners (Benefit)
20Experiment 2 Semantic priming results
- NYC R-Less
- All variants equally effective in lexical
activation - Benefit for GA prime
- NYC R-Full
- Pattern similar to R-Less participants
- Strong semantic priming independent of variant
dialect
- GA
- Priming only for GA primes
- NYC primes are unable to activate lexicon
Condition Prime Target GA -GA slend-er
thin NYC -GA slend? thin GA -NYC slend-er
thin NYC -NYC slend? thin
Exposure to two dialects results in equivalent
lexical activation across dialects NYC variant
inconsistent with representation resulting in
processing cost
21How do listeners process cross-dialect variants?
- Listeners exposed to both dialects
-
- generalize surface pattern
- form processing
- lexical activation
- in the short-term
22The issue of representation
- Striking similarity between R-Less and R-Full in
the short term - Listeners able to generalize surface pattern with
experience - Tasks do not inform us about nature of
representations - Issue of representation on backburner
- Surface generalizations derived from abstract
representations - Evidence that representations (and information
they carry) have a role in speech perception - Question What do listeners actually represent?
23Experiment 3 Long-term repetition priming
- Do listeners store a single abstract
representation, - or multiple, concrete representations?
Typical trial Individual words presented
Lexical decision made for each word Primes and
targets presented in different blocks or
lists Effect based on long-term activation of
phonological representations
24Experiment 3 Long-term repetition priming design
- Condition Block 1 Primes Block 2
Targets - GA GA repeated slend-er
- control filt-er filt-er
- 2. NYC GA repeated slend-er
- control filt-? filt-er
-
- GA NYC repeated slend-?
- control filt-er filt-?
- 4. NYC NYC repeated slend-?
- control filt-? filt-?
- Condition Block 1 Primes Block 2
Targets - GA GA repeated slend-er slend-er
- control filt-er
- 2. NYC GA repeated slend-? slend-er
- control filt-er
-
- GA NYC repeated slend-er slend-?
- control filt-?
- 4. NYC NYC repeated slend-? slend-?
- control filt-?
- 48 participants, 16 of each listener group
- 160 er final words
- No variant present in more than 1 trial
- Fillers used to eliminate response biases
25Experiment 3 Long-term repetition priming
predictions
- Expect GA participants to store one
representation - Strong within-dialect identity priming
-
- If listeners store multiple, concrete
representations - Strong within- and cross-dialect identity
priming - If experience affects representation
- Differences among three listener groups
(expected) -
-
26Long-term priming Results
- NYC R-Less
- Strong identity priming in both dialects
- Two variants stored
- NYC R-Full
- Similar to GA single abstract representation
- Representations differ from Overt-NYC
- GA
- Priming only for GA-GA condition
- Single representation
Type of experience plays role Language use ?
representation
27Language use is not equivalent to representation
- Two critical distinctions can be made
- Production and representation
- Process and representation
- NYC R-Less Participants
- Produced one form in interview but store two
representations - Representations not necessarily equivalent
- NYC R-Full and GA Participants
- Same representation, different immediate
ability to generalize variant pattern
28To sum up
- Language use is not a predictor of representation
- Evident cost of lack of experience with surface
variation - Experience influences
- Immediate processing and representations
- Benefit for canonical form
29Thank You!
30Do these patterns generalize to within-dialect
phonetic variation?
31Long-term repetition priming of phonetic variants
Are multiple phonetic variants stored as
independent forms?
Primes
Targets
flut flu?t? flu? flare ---
Basic Unreleased Glottal Repeated Control New
Control
flut flu?t? flu? flare flare
Basic Identity
Most frequent
Unreleased Identity
Glottal Identity
Repeated Identity
If multiple, concrete representations are stored
we should find identity priming for all
variants
32Are multiple phonetic variants stored as
independent forms?
- Only Basic t identity as strong as repeated
control - Low frequency form encoded most efficiently
- Identity priming indicative of concrete
representations
Prime Target Basic identity flut flut Unrel
eased identity flu?t? flu?t? Glottal
identity flu? flu? Control identity flare flar
e
Benefit for canonical form, even when it is not
the most frequent
33Implications and new directions
34Implications and important questions
- Benefit for canonical form
- Is something about t simply more memorable?
- Are certain acoustic cues more salient?
- Are abstract generalizations made over sounds or
words? - Specificity of representations?
- Rethink role and nature of representations
- At what level do multiple representations exist?
- What and where do listeners learn?
- Specific acoustic cues or robust generalizations?
- Is learning pre-lexical or lexical?
Learning and generalization of non-native
acoustic cues
35Voicing contrast in native and non-native English
- Native English voicing contrast made with
vowel-consonant duration ratio - Consider beat and bead
- In Polish, final devoicing leads to near
neutralization - Contrast made in voicing into closure duration
- Pilot studies
- Native Polish speaker of English transfer this
cue to English - Native English listeners perceive beat and bead
as beat
Bad Map
36Learning and generalization of non-native cues
- How do listeners learn to move from reliance on
a native acoustic cue to the use of a new
non-native cue?
- Where does learning occur?
- Is a cue learned and remapped at the pre-lexical
or lexical level? - What is generalized?
- Once a cue is learned, does it generalize to
- New words? Once beat/bead contrast learned
- Generalize to seat/seed and to tack/tag?
- New speakers? Learn contrast for speakers A B
- Generalize to C D?
- New L1 with same cue? Contrast learned for
Native Polish speakers of English Generalize
to native Korean?
37Conclusions
- Listeners
- Represent forms other than those they produce
- Process variants depending on prior experience
- Store multiple concrete representations
- Benefit from a canonical form (even if it is not
the most frequent) - A listeners knowledge is not autonomous, but
bound by experience - and through experience, multiple representations
are promoted
38Thank You!
39(No Transcript)
40Example illustration of priming
Long-term Representation
/?????-er/
/???/
Long-term repetition priming
/?????-?/
???
???
Phonemes or Phoneme Chunks
???
???
???
???
???
Feature Bundles
-er features
? features
Prime slend-er
Target slend-er
Speech Signal
Prime slend-?
Target slend-?
41Comment on error rates
Introduction Preliminaries Dialect
Experiments Generalization to past results New
Directions Conclusion
- Error rates examined for form and long-term
priming tasks - Strong benefit for GA form across groups
- independent of native dialect
Form priming
Long-term priming
42Error Rates show GA benefit
Error rates collapsed across form priming and
long-term priming experiments
Hearing a GA prime improves target recognition
accuracy even for Overt-NYC participants
43The problem of variation
- Consider the word card
- Boston khad
- New York kh??d
- German-English kha?t
- CARD or
- cod?
- cawed?
- cart?
44- Dialect atlas
- (Kurath, 1939 Labov et al., 2006)
- Social factors
- (Giles, 1970 Labov, 1972 Preston, 1986)
- Acoustic analysis
-
- Dialect identification
- (Clopper Pisoni, 2003)
- Dialect variation in OT
- (Anttila Cho, 1998)
- Perceptual learning speaker adaptation
- (Dahan Scarborough, 2005 Kraljic Samuel,
2005 Norris, McQueen, Cutler, 2003) -
- Perception of merged and unmerged dialects
45Experiment 2 Semantic Priming Schema(Covert-NYC
perspective)
Semantic priming
/??????/
/???/
Lexical
?
???
???
Phoneme
???
???
???
???
???
??? features
??? features
Feature Bundles
Speech Signal
??????
???
??????
46Coping with variation
White or dark meat? What was produced? d??k Wh
at did I hear? dog d??k da?k variation
not surprising
47Crossing the threshold
- What changed?
- Do I now treat d??k as a systematic variant of
/d??k/? - Did I learn to map a variant (e.g., d??k) onto
an existing representation, or did I create a new
exemplar representation?
48Examining linguistic issues with
psycholinguistic tasks Priming
- What is priming?
- Preparing a sound, chunk, word
- Benefit on the later recognition of a related
stimulus - What happens in a typical experiment
- Prime is presented (e.g., horse)
- Prime activates
- Sounds (h, o, etc.)
- Representation (/????/)
- Meaning horse, barn, cow, etc.
- Measure Reaction time to target
- Benefits of priming paradigm
- Sensitivity to subtle acoustic deviations
- Manipulate delay Immediate (processing) and
long-term (representation) effects
Target presented Form-sharing course Identical
horse Meaning-related barn
49Example illustration of priming
Long-term Representation
/?????-er/
/???/
???
???
Phonemes or Phoneme Chunks
???
???
???
???
???
Form priming
Feature Bundles
-er features
? features
Prime slend-er
Target slend-er
Speech Signal
Target slend-?
50Example illustration of priming
Long-term Representation
/?????-er/
/???/
Semantic Priming
???
???
Phonemes or Phoneme Chunks
???
???
???
???
???
Feature Bundles
-er features
? features
Prime slend-er
Target thin
Speech Signal
51Long-term Representation
/?????-er/
Long-term priming
???
???
Phonemes or Phoneme Chunks
???
???
???
???
???
Feature Bundles
-er features
? features
Prime slend-er
Speech Signal
52Whats ahead
- Experiment design and results
- Generalization to within-dialect phonetic
variation - Discussion of models of representation
- Implications and future directions
53What is the comparison?
- Comparison
- Reaction time to TARGET preceded by related
PRIME to - Reaction time to TARGET preceded by unrelated
CONTROL PRIME -
- Prime Target Reaction Time (Target)
- Control Trial runny runn-er 960
- Critical Trial runn-er runn-er 880
- Difference 80 msec Priming Effect
- Prime Target Reaction Time (Target)
- Control Trial runny runn-er 960
- Critical Trial run? runn-er 920
- Difference 40 msec Priming Effect
54Experiment 1 Form priming error rates
Hearing a GA prime improves recognition of NYC
target across the board
GA NYC runn-er run?
NYC NYC run? run?
55What can we learn through priming tasks?
- Form priming Do listeners generalize a pattern
for cross-dialectal variants independent of
dialect? - Semantic priming Are cross-dialectal variants
mapped onto by meaning by listeners independent
of dialect? - Long-term repetition priming Are
cross-dialectal variants mapped onto a single
abstract representation, or stored as individual
concrete, or exemplar, representations? -
Immediate processing
Long-term representation