Name : Nisa Indah Ambarani

NIM : 23030160161
Class : TBI B
Subject: Psycholinguistics
Lecturer : Mrs. Evi Murti Wardhani, S.Pd.,
MA.

MISPERCEPTION WHEN SOMEONE GETTING FLU

A. BACKGROUND
This project is talking about speech perception. The writer interviewed the
participant at 11 April 2019 by voice note in Whatsapp application. Here is the data of
the participant:
Name : Hestina
Age : 26 years
Gender : Woman
Occupation : Civil servant
Last education : Bachelor (S.IP)
She is rather good in speaking. In her office, she becomes moderator or presenter
in some events. Because of the weather is uncertain, she gets flu which makes her
voice not clear as usual. The pronounced is not well enough which make some people
get misperception of her speech. She thinks that it is very crucial when she is flu and
cannot speak well.
She has 3 younger sister, 2 of them are in elementary school. She has many
friends in her office which has same or higher education than her. She lives with her
husband and parents in law (in Ungaran). Her husband and parents in law also have
good education background. Sometimes, she goes to her parents house (Kopeng) and
meets her sisters.

B. PROJECT PROBLEM
After looking the theory and the situation around me, I decided to analyze one of
the model in speech perception, it is Fuzzy Logical Model. The problem of this
project is “Why misperception can be happened when someone talk to people who
gets flu?”

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C. THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK
1. Definition of Speech Perception
When we are talking to other people, sometimes the listener has different
perception with our speech. This condition called speech perception. In
Psycholinguistics, speech perception can be happened when the speaker and
listener have different or same perception of something. It is happened according
to the situation and environment, speech organ and speech production of the
speaker, and the memory or prototype of the listener. A major issue in speech
perception is how listeners are able to recognize sounds and words despite large
variations in the way speakers produce them.
A significant portion of the literature on talker differences has considered this
source of variation a kind of noise in the correspondence between phonetic and
acoustic attributes introduced during the transformation from phoneme to phonetic
event. From this perspective, talker differences obscure the acoustic correlates of
phonemes that permit a perceiver to resolve words. Many accounts of speech
perception propose a normalization function that removes this noise from the
signal, arriving at abstract phonemes (Pisoni, 1997; Magnuson & Nusbaum, 2004;
Johnson, 2005).
One of the most puzzling questions in speech perception is that of speaker
normalization. That is, how is it that listeners are able to recognize sounds and
words despite the large variations in the way that speakers produce them?
Speakers vary speech sounds in terms of pitch, loudness, stress, and rate of
speech. Speaker age and sex also influence sound production. For example, the
same vowel can be produced with very different ranges of formant frequencies
from speake~ to speaker, and with considerable overlap with other vowels, yet
most listeners have no difficulty in vowel recognition. Even infants are able to
discriminate speech sounds produced by different talkers with relative ease.
Somehow we normalize speech; that is, we seem to be able to ignore irrelevant
differences between productions of a given sound, while focusing on the features
that characterize it as a member of that particular phoneme family.

2. Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception

According to Massaro, 1987, this model assumes that there are three
operations in phoneme identification. First, features are evaluated to determine
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their presence in an interval of sound. However, rather than being rated
dichotomously as being present or absent, features are assigned continuous
"fuzzy" values ranging from 0 to 1, indicating the degree of certainty that the
feature appears in the signal. Zero means that the feature is absent, and 1 means
that the feature is definitely present. A value of 0.5 indicates that the signal is
completely ambiguous in terms of the feature. The clearest and least ambiguous
information has the greatest impact on classification decisions. The second
operation is called prototype matching. At this stage the features that were
determined to be present at the first stage are compared with prototypes of
phonemes stored in the person's memory. The final operation, pattern
classification, determines the best match between candidate phonemes and the
input. This theory rejects the notion of specialized processes in speech perception.
The model argues that speech perception is not necessarily categorical, but can be
explained by the integration of continuously evaluated features. Thus, continuous
information remains available in speech perception, despite the categorical
identification and discrimination functions obtained in typical studies.
To recognize the syllable /ba/, the perceiver must be able to relate the
information provided by the syllable itself to some memory of the category /ba/.
Prototypes are generated for the task at hand. In speech perception, for example,
we might envision activation of all prototypes corresponding to the perceptual
units of the language being spoken. For ease of exposition, consider a speech
signal representing a single perceptual unit, such as the syllable /ba/. The sensory
systems transduce the physical event and make available various sources of
information called features. During the first operation in the model, the features
are evaluated in terms of the prototypes in memory. For each feature and for each
prototype, featural evaluation provides information about the degree to which the
feature in the speech signal matches the featural value of the prototype.
In brief, fuzzy logical model of perception happened when there is disturbance
in the speech production, especially in mouth. When someone gets flu, sprue, and
toothache, the production of our speech will different with normal people. It
makes the listener can have different or maybe same perception with our speech.
To minimalize the misperception, ask more information is needed.

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D. DISCUSSION
After knowing the theory and doing interview, the writer will discuss from the
problem “Why misperception can be happened when someone talk to people who gets
flu?” with Fuzzy Logical Model of perception.
1. Flu makes the interviewee’s speech not clear
She said that she feels bad in speaking when she gets serious flu, because it is
difficult when she breaths with her mouth. It is fit with the theory. When someone
get flu, it will influential with our speech. From the interviewee, she is difficult in
speaking because she inhales and exhales by his mouth. Even mouth is used to
speak also. It makes the sound of her voice is not clear.
2. Flu makes the listener confused with the interviewee’s speech
She said that when she gets serious flu, some people even hear others, like out of
context. That’s true, because her speech is not clear, even she thinks that it is
clear. When she said “mangga” the listener hear “nangka”. She said “barang”, the
listener hear “arang”. When she called her sister “sa” other people hear “ha”
From this case, it can be happened, because the phonemes of those words are
rarely same.
a. “Mangga” can be heard as “nangka”. In case, when the situation is not able to
say ‘nangka’ the listener will know that is can be ‘mangga’ not ‘nangka’. If
there are these two fruits in that situation, the listener can ask ‘what? Nangka?’
or ‘nangka or mangga?’. The listener must ask to cross check the speech.
b. “bareng” and “areng”. These words are rarely has same syllable. When the
speaker and listener are talking about ‘sate’ or barbeque party, the word
‘arang’ can be proper in this case. Sometimes, people don’t think fast when
talking something. Such as said ‘barang’ (things), you can say in specific,
‘book’ or ‘pencil’, etc. It makes the listener have to ask more about are you
say ‘barang’ or ‘arang’.
c. “saf” and “han”. Her sister name is Safira usually called as ‘saf’ and Jihan
called ‘han’. Nisa and Jihan ever feel confused when her sister (hestina) said it
(when she gets flu). ‘sa’ and ‘han’ just have one same word ‘a’, but it will hear
fuzzy when the pronounce is not good. It is also according to the situation or
context of the conversation that they do.

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 3. Background and situation influence to the speech perception
She said that misperception (when she gets flu) often happen at home, seldom
happen in her office.
From the theory, background and situation also influenced to the speech
perception. When in the office, almost all people have good education and
background. They also know well what situation that occurs in that time. Her
friends will understand with the speech even it is not as clear as usual.
This condition will be different when she is at home. She has 2 young sisters
which still in elementary school. Her sisters will be confused when she speaks not
clear. It happened because her young sisters’ memory and knowledge of words
haven’t as much as older people. It can be said that background of the listener and
speaker is important to minimalize the different speech perception.

E. CONCLUSION
Fuzzy logical model of speech perception can be happened when someone has
disturbance in their speech organ, especially in mouth. In this case is when someone
getting flu, she has to inhale and exhale by her mouth. Using mouth to breathe and
also speak is rather difficult and make the sound of the speech is not clear or fuzzy.
The different and same perception can occur when someone gets flu. Sometimes the
listener will ask more to get clear information, or even not, the listener will do or hear
wrong speech. This mistake will very crucial if it isn’t clarified as soon as possible.
Besides, the background and situation also influence to the fuzzy logical model of
speech perception. Generally, when someone has high education, adult or mature, has
more knowledge of words (vocabularies) and good memory (brain system), they can
minimalize the mistake in fuzzy logical speech perception.

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Attachment

INTERVIEW’S SCRIPT
Q : “Apakah anda mengalami kesulitan berbicara ketika mengalami flu? Dan bagaimana
kemampuan berbicara anda ketika tidak flu/ dalam keadaan sehat?
A : “Sebenarnya biasa saja, tapi ketika flunya parah itu cukup sulit ya. Karena kan saya
nafasnya pakai mulut, soalnya hidungnya mampet. Jadi mulut untuk nafas dan bicara.
Kalau keadaan sehat berbicaranya lancar dan baik, tidak ada gangguan.”
Q : “Apakah pernah terjadi salah persepso ketika anda berbicara A namun teman/ saudara
anda menganggap anda berbicara A (dengan tidak jeals) sehingga lawan bicara anda
bertanya kembali maksud pertanyaan anda? Jika IYA tolong jelaskan.
A : “Pernah tapi tidak terlalu sering ya. Terutama kalau di kantor atau di rumah sini.
(Ungaran) kebanyakan sudah paham saya ngomong apa. Waktu itu pernah waktu di
Kopeng saya minta tolong Safira untuk mengambilkan mangga malah yang diambil
nangka.”
Q : “Berarti kebetulan ada mangga dan nangka ya?”
A : “Iya, habis itu ketawa semua karena yang diambil salah.”
Q : “Apa yang anda lakukan ketika lawan bicara anda salah menafsirkan perkataan anda?”
A : “Awalnya saya ketawa karena itu lucu, yang lainnya tahu saya ngomong mangga tapi
safira pahamnya nangka. Tapi setelah itu tanpa saya tanya, safira sudah bilang sendiri,
‘lha kayak nangka oo’.”
Q : “Apakah ada kejadian salah persepsi lain selain mangga dan nangka?”
A : “Iya ada. Waktu itu saya waktu flu manggil Safira ‘saf’ tapi malah Jihan ‘han’ yang
nengok. Mungkin Jihan nggak konsen jadinya salah gitu.”
Q : “Di kantor atau di rumah (Ungaran) ada kejadian serupa tidak?”
A : “Mungkin pernah, tapi saya tidak terlalu menyadari itu.”
Q : “Oke selanjutnya, apakah anda pernah menafsirkan persepsi yang salah dari perkataan
orang lain? Jika iya tolong jelaskan.”
A : “Tidak terlalu ingat sih soal itu. Tapi pernah waktu itu teman saya (agak pilek) bilang
‘bareng aku wae’, tapi saya dengarnya ‘areng aku wae’. Saya langsung bilang ‘kok areng
sih, bareng to?’ dia lalu sedikit meninggi nadanya ‘lhayo bareng’ gitu. Hehehe
Q : “Oke, terima kasih banyak atas respon positifnya atas wawancara ini.”
A : “Sama-sama. Semoga bisa membantu dan hasil projeknya maksimal.”