14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

Compensation for Coarticulation in Audiovisual Speech Perception

Carol A. Fowler (1), Julie M. Brown (1), Virginia A. Mann (2)

(1) University of Connecticut, USA; (2) University of California, Irvine, USA

Recently the claim that listeners compensate for coarticulation by closely tracking information about the talker's coarticulatory behavior has been challenged by findings of compensation-like responses to speech on the part of Japanese quail and by findings of compensation-like responses of humans to tonal precursors of syllables. These findings led to a conclusion that apparent compensations for coarticulation reflect a low-level frequency contrast effect. We disconfirm that account in a first experiment and then confirm that precursor tones, if sufficiently intense, can mask following syllables giving rise to compensation-like response patterns. However, we rule out that account and any other account in terms of auditory contrast effects as underlying compensation for coarticulation generally by showing compensation for coarticulatory effects of precursor syllables when information for the coarticulatory effects is optical.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Fowler, Carol A. / Brown, Julie M. / Mann, Virginia A. (1999): "Compensation for coarticulation in audiovisual speech perception", In ICPhS-14, 639-642.