Anne Cutler †

Publications

Displaying 1 - 27 of 27
  • Cutler, A., & Jesse, A. (2021). Word stress in speech perception. In J. S. Pardo, L. C. Nygaard, & D. B. Pisoni (Eds.), The handbook of speech perception (2nd ed., pp. 239-265). Chichester: Wiley.
  • Cutler, A., Aslin, R. N., Gervain, J., & Nespor, M. (Eds.). (2021). Special issue in honor of Jacques Mehler, Cognition's founding editor [Special Issue]. Cognition, 213.
  • Cutler, A., Aslin, R. N., Gervain, J., & Nespor, M. (2021). Special issue in honor of Jacques Mehler, Cognition's founding editor [preface]. Cognition, 213: 104786. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104786.
  • Kember, H., Choi, J., Yu, J., & Cutler, A. (2021). The processing of linguistic prominence. Language and Speech, 64(2), 413-436. doi:10.1177/0023830919880217.

    Abstract

    Prominence, the expression of informational weight within utterances, can be signaled by
    prosodic highlighting (head-prominence, as in English) or by position (as in Korean edge-prominence).
    Prominence confers processing advantages, even if conveyed only by discourse manipulations. Here
    we compared processing of prominence in English and Korean, using a task that indexes processing
    success, namely recognition memory. In each language, participants’ memory was tested for target
    words heard in sentences in which they were prominent due to prosody, position, both or neither.
    Prominence produced recall advantage, but the relative effects differed across language. For Korean
    listeners the positional advantage was greater, but for English listeners prosodic and syntactic
    prominence had equivalent and additive effects. In a further experiment semantic and phonological
    foils tested depth of processing of the recall targets. Both foil types were correctly rejected,
    suggesting that semantic processing had not reached the level at which word form was no longer
    available. Together the results suggest that prominence processing is primarily driven by universal
    effects of information structure; but language-specific differences in frequency of experience prompt
    different relative advantages of prominence signal types. Processing efficiency increases in each case,
    however, creating more accurate and more rapidly contactable memory representations.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (2021). More why, less how: What we need from models of cognition. Cognition, 213: 104688. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104688.

    Abstract

    Science regularly experiences periods in which simply describing the world is prioritised over attempting to explain it. Cognition, this journal, came into being some 45 years ago as an attempt to lay one such period to rest; without doubt, it has helped create the current cognitive science climate in which theory is decidedly welcome. Here we summarise the reasons why a theoretical approach is imperative in our field, and call attention to some potentially counter-productive trends in which cognitive models are concerned too exclusively with how processes work at the expense of why the processes exist in the first place and thus what the goal of modelling them must be.
  • Zhou, W., Broersma, M., & Cutler, A. (2021). Asymmetric memory for birth language perception versus production in young international adoptees. Cognition, 213: 104788. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104788.

    Abstract

    Adults who as children were adopted into a different linguistic community retain knowledge of their birth language. The possession (without awareness) of such knowledge is known to facilitate the (re)learning of birth-language speech patterns; this perceptual learning predicts such adults' production success as well, indicating that the retained linguistic knowledge is abstract in nature. Adoptees' acquisition of their adopted language is fast and complete; birth-language mastery disappears rapidly, although this latter process has been little studied. Here, 46 international adoptees from China aged four to 10 years, with Dutch as their new language, plus 47 matched non-adopted Dutch-native controls and 40 matched non-adopted Chinese controls, undertook across a two-week period 10 blocks of training in perceptually identifying Chinese speech contrasts (one segmental, one tonal) which were unlike any Dutch contrasts. Chinese controls easily accomplished all these tasks. The same participants also provided speech production data in an imitation task. In perception, adoptees and Dutch controls scored equivalently poorly at the outset of training; with training, the adoptees significantly improved while the Dutch controls did not. In production, adoptees' imitations both before and after training could be better identified, and received higher goodness ratings, than those of Dutch controls. The perception results confirm that birth-language knowledge is stored and can facilitate re-learning in post-adoption childhood; the production results suggest that although processing of phonological category detail appears to depend on access to the stored knowledge, general articulatory dimensions can at this age also still be remembered, and may facilitate spoken imitation.

    Additional information

    stimulus materials
  • Burnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N. and 10 moreBurnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N., Kinoshita, Y., Kuratate, T., Lewis, T. W., Loakes, D. E., Onslow, M., Powers, D. M., Rose, P., Togneri, R., Tran, D., & Wagner, M. (2009). A blueprint for a comprehensive Australian English auditory-visual speech corpus. In M. Haugh, K. Burridge, J. Mulder, & P. Peters (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2008 HCSNet Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus (pp. 96-107). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    Large auditory-visual (AV) speech corpora are the grist of modern research in speech science, but no such corpus exists for Australian English. This is unfortunate, for speech science is the brains behind speech technology and applications such as text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, automatic speech recognition (ASR), speaker recognition and forensic identification, talking heads, and hearing prostheses. Advances in these research areas in Australia require a large corpus of Australian English. Here the authors describe a blueprint for building the Big Australian Speech Corpus (the Big ASC), a corpus of over 1,100 speakers from urban and rural Australia, including speakers of non-indigenous, indigenous, ethnocultural, and disordered forms of Australian English, each of whom would be sampled on three occasions in a range of speech tasks designed by the researchers who would be using the corpus.
  • Cutler, A. (2009). Greater sensitivity to prosodic goodness in non-native than in native listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 3522-3525. doi:10.1121/1.3117434.

    Abstract

    English listeners largely disregard suprasegmental cues to stress in recognizing words. Evidence for this includes the demonstration of Fear et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 1893–1904 (1995)] that cross-splicings are tolerated between stressed and unstressed full vowels (e.g., au- of autumn, automata). Dutch listeners, however, do exploit suprasegmental stress cues in recognizing native-language words. In this study, Dutch listeners were presented with English materials from the study of Fear et al. Acceptability ratings by these listeners revealed sensitivity to suprasegmental mismatch, in particular, in replacements of unstressed full vowels by higher-stressed vowels, thus evincing greater sensitivity to prosodic goodness than had been shown by the original native listener group.
  • Cutler, A., Davis, C., & Kim, J. (2009). Non-automaticity of use of orthographic knowledge in phoneme evaluation. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 380-383). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    Two phoneme goodness rating experiments addressed the role of orthographic knowledge in the evaluation of speech sounds. Ratings for the best tokens of /s/ were higher in words spelled with S (e.g., bless) than in words where /s/ was spelled with C (e.g., voice). This difference did not appear for analogous nonwords for which every lexical neighbour had either S or C spelling (pless, floice). Models of phonemic processing incorporating obligatory influence of lexical information in phonemic processing cannot explain this dissociation; the data are consistent with models in which phonemic decisions are not subject to necessary top-down lexical influence.
  • Cutler, A. (2009). Psycholinguistics in our time. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Inside psychology: A science over 50 years (pp. 91-101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Cutler, A., Otake, T., & McQueen, J. M. (2009). Vowel devoicing and the perception of spoken Japanese words. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125(3), 1693-1703. doi:10.1121/1.3075556.

    Abstract

    Three experiments, in which Japanese listeners detected Japanese words embedded in nonsense sequences, examined the perceptual consequences of vowel devoicing in that language. Since vowelless sequences disrupt speech segmentation [Norris et al. (1997). Cognit. Psychol. 34, 191– 243], devoicing is potentially problematic for perception. Words in initial position in nonsense sequences were detected more easily when followed by a sequence containing a vowel than by a vowelless segment (with or without further context), and vowelless segments that were potential devoicing environments were no easier than those not allowing devoicing. Thus asa, “morning,” was easier in asau or asazu than in all of asap, asapdo, asaf, or asafte, despite the fact that the /f/ in the latter two is a possible realization of fu, with devoiced [u]. Japanese listeners thus do not treat devoicing contexts as if they always contain vowels. Words in final position in nonsense sequences, however, produced a different pattern: here, preceding vowelless contexts allowing devoicing impeded word detection less strongly (so, sake was detected less accurately, but not less rapidly, in nyaksake—possibly arising from nyakusake—than in nyagusake). This is consistent with listeners treating consonant sequences as potential realizations of parts of existing lexical candidates wherever possible.
  • Kooijman, V., Hagoort, P., & Cutler, A. (2009). Prosodic structure in early word segmentation: ERP evidence from Dutch ten-month-olds. Infancy, 14, 591 -612. doi:10.1080/15250000903263957.

    Abstract

    Recognizing word boundaries in continuous speech requires detailed knowledge of the native language. In the first year of life, infants acquire considerable word segmentation abilities. Infants at this early stage in word segmentation rely to a large extent on the metrical pattern of their native language, at least in stress-based languages. In Dutch and English (both languages with a preferred trochaic stress pattern), segmentation of strong-weak words develops rapidly between 7 and 10 months of age. Nevertheless, trochaic languages contain not only strong-weak words but also words with a weak-strong stress pattern. In this article, we present electrophysiological evidence of the beginnings of weak-strong word segmentation in Dutch 10-month-olds. At this age, the ability to combine different cues for efficient word segmentation does not yet seem to be completely developed. We provide evidence that Dutch infants still largely rely on strong syllables, even for the segmentation of weak-strong words.
  • Tyler, M., & Cutler, A. (2009). Cross-language differences in cue use for speech segmentation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 126, 367-376. doi:10.1121/1.3129127.

    Abstract

    Two artificial-language learning experiments directly compared English, French, and Dutch listeners’ use of suprasegmental cues for continuous-speech segmentation. In both experiments, listeners heard unbroken sequences of consonant-vowel syllables, composed of recurring three- and four-syllable “words.” These words were demarcated by(a) no cue other than transitional probabilities induced by their recurrence, (b) a consistent left-edge cue, or (c) a consistent right-edge cue. Experiment 1 examined a vowel lengthening cue. All three listener groups benefited from this cue in right-edge position; none benefited from it in left-edge position. Experiment 2 examined a pitch-movement cue. English listeners used this cue in left-edge position, French listeners used it in right-edge position, and Dutch listeners used it in both positions. These findings are interpreted as evidence of both language-universal and language-specific effects. Final lengthening is a language-universal effect expressing a more general (non-linguistic) mechanism. Pitch movement expresses prominence which has characteristically different placements across languages: typically at right edges in French, but at left edges in English and Dutch. Finally, stress realization in English versus Dutch encourages greater attention to suprasegmental variation by Dutch than by English listeners, allowing Dutch listeners to benefit from an informative pitch-movement cue even in an uncharacteristic position.
  • Butterfield, S., & Cutler, A. (1988). Segmentation errors by human listeners: Evidence for a prosodic segmentation strategy. In W. Ainsworth, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Proceedings of SPEECH ’88: Seventh Symposium of the Federation of Acoustic Societies of Europe: Vol. 3 (pp. 827-833). Edinburgh: Institute of Acoustics.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1988). Limits on bilingualism [Letters to Nature]. Nature, 340, 229-230. doi:10.1038/340229a0.

    Abstract

    SPEECH, in any language, is continuous; speakers provide few reliable cues to the boundaries of words, phrases, or other meaningful units. To understand speech, listeners must divide the continuous speech stream into portions that correspond to such units. This segmentation process is so basic to human language comprehension that psycholinguists long assumed that all speakers would do it in the same way. In previous research1,2, however, we reported that segmentation routines can be language-specific: speakers of French process spoken words syllable by syllable, but speakers of English do not. French has relatively clear syllable boundaries and syllable-based timing patterns, whereas English has relatively unclear syllable boundaries and stress-based timing; thus syllabic segmentation would work more efficiently in the comprehension of French than in the comprehension of English. Our present study suggests that at this level of language processing, there are limits to bilingualism: a bilingual speaker has one and only one basic language.
  • Cutler, A. (1988). The perfect speech error. In L. Hyman, & C. Li (Eds.), Language, speech and mind: Studies in honor of Victoria A. Fromkin (pp. 209-223). London: Croom Helm.
  • Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 113-121. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.14.1.113.

    Abstract

    A model of speech segmentation in a stress language is proposed, according to which the occurrence of a strong syllable triggers segmentation of the speech signal, whereas occurrence of a weak syllable does not trigger segmentation. We report experiments in which listeners detected words embedded in nonsense bisyllables more slowly when the bisyllable had two strong syllables than when it had a strong and a weak syllable; mint was detected more slowly in mintayve than in mintesh. According to our proposed model, this result is an effect of segmentation: When the second syllable is strong, it is segmented from the first syllable, and successful detection of the embedded word therefore requires assembly of speech material across a segmentation position. Speech recognition models involving phonemic or syllabic recoding, or based on strictly left-to-right processes, do not predict this result. It is argued that segmentation at strong syllables in continuous speech recognition serves the purpose of detecting the most efficient locations at which to initiate lexical access. (C) 1988 by the American Psychological Association
  • Hawkins, J. A., & Cutler, A. (1988). Psycholinguistic factors in morphological asymmetry. In J. A. Hawkins (Ed.), Explaining language universals (pp. 280-317). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Henderson, L., Coltheart, M., Cutler, A., & Vincent, N. (1988). Preface. Linguistics, 26(4), 519-520. doi:10.1515/ling.1988.26.4.519.
  • Mehta, G., & Cutler, A. (1988). Detection of target phonemes in spontaneous and read speech. Language and Speech, 31, 135-156.

    Abstract

    Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Response were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than earlier targets, and targets preceded by long words were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claim from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognizing speech.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1988). Speech recognition in French and English. MRC News, 39, 30-31.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1988). The relative accessibility of phonemes and syllables. Perception and Psychophysics, 43, 541-550. Retrieved from http://www.psychonomic.org/search/view.cgi?id=8530.

    Abstract

    Previous research comparing detection times for syllables and for phonemes has consistently found that syllables are responded to faster than phonemes. This finding poses theoretical problems for strictly hierarchical models of speech recognition, in which smaller units should be able to be identified faster than larger units. However, inspection of the characteristics of previous experiments’stimuli reveals that subjects have been able to respond to syllables on the basis of only a partial analysis of the stimulus. In the present experiment, five groups of subjects listened to identical stimulus material. Phoneme and syllable monitoring under standard conditions was compared with monitoring under conditions in which near matches of target and stimulus occurred on no-response trials. In the latter case, when subjects were forced to analyze each stimulus fully, phonemes were detected faster than syllables.
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. A. (Eds.). (1978). [Annotated re-issue of R. Meringer and C. Mayer: Versprechen und Verlesen, 1895]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. (1978). Introduction. In A. Cutler, & D. Fay (Eds.), [Annotated re-issue of R. Meringer and C. Mayer: Versprechen und Verlesen, 1895] (pp. ix-xl). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Cutler, A., & Cooper, W. E. (1978). Phoneme-monitoring in the context of different phonetic sequences. Journal of Phonetics, 6, 221-225.

    Abstract

    The order of some conjoined words is rigidly fixed (e.g. dribs and drabs/*drabs and dribs). Both phonetic and semantic factors can play a role in determining the fixed order. An experiment was conducted to test whether listerners’ reaction times for monitoring a predetermined phoneme are influenced by phonetic constraints on ordering. Two such constraints were investigated: monosyllable-bissyllable and high-low vowel sequences. In English, conjoined words occur in such sequences with much greater frequency than their converses, other factors being equal. Reaction times were significantly shorter for phoneme monitoring in monosyllable-bisyllable sequences than in bisyllable- monosyllable sequences. However, reaction times were not significantly different for high-low vs. low-high vowel sequences.
  • Cutler, A. (1975). Sentence stress and sentence comprehension. PhD Thesis, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. (1975). You have a Dictionary in your Head, not a Thesaurus. Texas Linguistic Forum, 1, 27-40.

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