Publications

Displaying 1 - 5 of 5
  • Bosker, H. R., & Kösem, A. (2017). An entrained rhythm's frequency, not phase, influences temporal sampling of speech. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2416-2420). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-73.

    Abstract

    Brain oscillations have been shown to track the slow amplitude fluctuations in speech during comprehension. Moreover, there is evidence that these stimulus-induced cortical rhythms may persist even after the driving stimulus has ceased. However, how exactly this neural entrainment shapes speech perception remains debated. This behavioral study investigated whether and how the frequency and phase of an entrained rhythm would influence the temporal sampling of subsequent speech. In two behavioral experiments, participants were presented with slow and fast isochronous tone sequences, followed by Dutch target words ambiguous between as /ɑs/ “ash” (with a short vowel) and aas /a:s/ “bait” (with a long vowel). Target words were presented at various phases of the entrained rhythm. Both experiments revealed effects of the frequency of the tone sequence on target word perception: fast sequences biased listeners to more long /a:s/ responses. However, no evidence for phase effects could be discerned. These findings show that an entrained rhythm’s frequency, but not phase, influences the temporal sampling of subsequent speech. These outcomes are compatible with theories suggesting that sensory timing is evaluated relative to entrained frequency. Furthermore, they suggest that phase tracking of (syllabic) rhythms by theta oscillations plays a limited role in speech parsing.
  • Franken, M. K., Eisner, F., Schoffelen, J.-M., Acheson, D. J., Hagoort, P., & McQueen, J. M. (2017). Audiovisual recalibration of vowel categories. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 655-658). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-122.

    Abstract

    One of the most daunting tasks of a listener is to map a
    continuous auditory stream onto known speech sound
    categories and lexical items. A major issue with this mapping
    problem is the variability in the acoustic realizations of sound
    categories, both within and across speakers. Past research has
    suggested listeners may use visual information (e.g., lipreading)
    to calibrate these speech categories to the current
    speaker. Previous studies have focused on audiovisual
    recalibration of consonant categories. The present study
    explores whether vowel categorization, which is known to show
    less sharply defined category boundaries, also benefit from
    visual cues.
    Participants were exposed to videos of a speaker
    pronouncing one out of two vowels, paired with audio that was
    ambiguous between the two vowels. After exposure, it was
    found that participants had recalibrated their vowel categories.
    In addition, individual variability in audiovisual recalibration is
    discussed. It is suggested that listeners’ category sharpness may
    be related to the weight they assign to visual information in
    audiovisual speech perception. Specifically, listeners with less
    sharp categories assign more weight to visual information
    during audiovisual speech recognition.
  • Dolscheid, S., Willems, R. M., Hagoort, P., & Casasanto, D. (2014). The relation of space and musical pitch in the brain. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014) (pp. 421-426). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Numerous experiments show that space and musical pitch are
    closely linked in people's minds. However, the exact nature of
    space-pitch associations and their neuronal underpinnings are
    not well understood. In an fMRI experiment we investigated
    different types of spatial representations that may underlie
    musical pitch. Participants judged stimuli that varied in
    spatial height in both the visual and tactile modalities, as well
    as auditory stimuli that varied in pitch height. In order to
    distinguish between unimodal and multimodal spatial bases of
    musical pitch, we examined whether pitch activations were
    present in modality-specific (visual or tactile) versus
    multimodal (visual and tactile) regions active during spatial
    height processing. Judgments of musical pitch were found to
    activate unimodal visual areas, suggesting that space-pitch
    associations may involve modality-specific spatial
    representations, supporting a key assumption of embodied
    theories of metaphorical mental representation.
  • Heyselaar, E., Hagoort, P., & Segaert, K. (2014). In dialogue with an avatar, syntax production is identical compared to dialogue with a human partner. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014) (pp. 2351-2356). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    The use of virtual reality (VR) as a methodological tool is
    becoming increasingly popular in behavioural research due
    to its seemingly limitless possibilities. This new method has
    not been used frequently in the field of psycholinguistics,
    however, possibly due to the assumption that humancomputer
    interaction does not accurately reflect human-human
    interaction. In the current study we compare participants’
    language behaviour in a syntactic priming task with human
    versus avatar partners. Our study shows comparable priming
    effects between human and avatar partners (Human: 12.3%;
    Avatar: 12.6% for passive sentences) suggesting that VR is a
    valid platform for conducting language research and studying
    dialogue interactions.
  • Peeters, D., Azar, Z., & Ozyurek, A. (2014). The interplay between joint attention, physical proximity, and pointing gesture in demonstrative choice. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014) (pp. 1144-1149). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

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