Word segmentation from noise-band vocoded speech

ABSTRACT

Spectral degradation reduces access to the acoustics of spoken language and compromises how learners break into its structure. We hypothesised that spectral degradation disrupts word segmentation, but that listeners can exploit other cues to restore detection of words. Normal-hearing adults were familiarised to artificial speech that was unprocessed or spectrally degraded by noise-band vocoding into 16 or 8 spectral channels. The monotonic speech stream was pause-free (Experiment 1), interspersed with isolated words (Experiment 2), or slowed by 33% (Experiment 3). Participants were tested on segmentation of familiar vs. novel syllable sequences and on recognition of individual syllables. As expected, vocoding hindered both word segmentation and syllable recognition. The addition of isolated words, but not slowed speech, improved segmentation. We conclude that syllable recognition is necessary but not sufficient for successful word segmentation, and that isolated words can facilitate listeners’ access to the structure of acoustically degraded speech.

KEYWORDS:

• Word segmentation
• noise-band vocoding
• spectral degradation
• speech rate
• isolated words

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Paul Reinhart, Valerie Tiscareno, and Klinton Bicknell for invaluable help with experiment design, data collection, and data analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Hearing Research Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HD079779).