Evidence for a visual buffer

In an experiment by Sperling (1960), participants were asked to identify which letter in a

series of letters had a vertical line next to it. The mark was presented after a short delay from
the letters, but participants reported seeing them simultaneously. This suggests that it takes
time to transfer visual information from the visual buffer to working memory, and if new
visual input is received too soon, the previous information can be overwritten. This has
implications for reading, where skipping ahead too soon can merge or replace visual
information before it can be processed.

Eye movement and reading:

Visual language perception during reading involves the movement of eye gaze, which is
measured through fixations and saccades. Different measures, such as WI, BL, LF, and WL,
indicate the level of word identification and processing taking place during reading. The total
perceptual span of the fixation is greater than the size of the jump between fixations and
includes more words than those that can be readily identified.

The nature of visual input

There are differences in visual language perception based on the writing system used.
Shallow orthography, found in languages such as Italian and Maori, has a predictable
relationship between spelling and pronunciation. In contrast, deep orthography, as seen in
English, has a high degree of irregularity. Other writing systems include consonantal systems
like Hebrew and Arabic, and syllabic systems like Kannada and the Japanese kana writing
system.

Influence of the linguistic system on perception

The linguistic system can influence perception in several ways. Phoneme restoration effects
depend on the sentence context in which the replaced phoneme occurs, while the cocktail
party effect demonstrates the perceptual advantages of language-relevant stimuli compared
to nonlinguistic stimuli. The word superiority effect shows that individual letters are
recognized more rapidly and reliably when they occur in words. Neurophysiological evidence
from EEG and MEG studies shows that the processing advantage for real words over
nonsense words becomes distinct as early as 150 msec after the point at which a word can be
recognized. EEG and MEG are techniques for measuring brain activity by measuring electrical
and magnetic fields, respectively.

Categorical perception:

Speech perception is categorical, which means that we classify speech stimuli as belonging to
specific categories rather than hearing them as gradual variations along a phonetic dimension.
This has been studied experimentally for voiced and voiceless plosive consonants, where the
distinction is signaled by parameters such as voice onset time (VOT), the time lag between
the release of the closure for the plosive and the beginning of voicing for a following vowel.

Understanding Voice Onset Time (VOT)

Voice Onset Time (VOT) refers to the time interval between the release of a stop and the
beginning of vocal fold vibration. Voiced sounds have shorter VOT than voiceless sounds, as
the vocal folds are already close together and can start vibrating sooner. VOT is typically less
than 30ms for voiced plosives like /b/ and more than 30ms for voiceless plosives like /p/ in
English. The temporal mismatch between the closing and voicing mechanisms can be
measured in milliseconds or seconds.

In the Categorical Perception experiment, participants were asked to identify or discriminate

between synthesised /ba/-like or /pa/-like syllables. The results showed that participants
treated stimuli on either side of a dramatic shift in identification response as belonging to
different categories, with no ability to discriminate among members of the same category.
This suggests that sounds are placed into perceptual categories with sharp boundaries,
supporting the idea of categorical perception in language perception and comprehension.

Are phonetic distinctions innate ?

No,The evidence suggests that while infants are born with the ability to discriminate between
phonetic categories, this does not necessarily imply that these distinctions are innate to the
human brain. Other animals, such as chinchillas, are also able to categorically distinguish
sounds despite not having evolved to speak, suggesting that this ability is not unique to
humans or to speech sounds. Additionally, cross-linguistic differences in the boundaries of
phonetic categories suggest that these distinctions are learned rather than innate. The
Ganong effect further highlights the flexibility of these categories, as they can be influenced
by linguistic context.

Perceptioanl terms
-semantic Priming :Priming can exist between doctor and nurse so that participants can
respond to the word nurse more rapidly and accurately when they have seen or heard doctor
shortly before than otherwise.

-cue integration: In identifying a voiceless plosive (e.g. /p/) a listener may hear a closure, an
aspirated release of the closure and the long oice onset time (VOT) and put these three pieces
of acoustic information together to conclude that the segment was a voiceless plosive. Can
also involve putting together cues from different sources

-Ganong effect :A stimulus which is ambiguous between /d/ and /t/ is more likely to be
interpreted as /d/ in the context /_esk/ because desk is a real word but tesk is not, but as /t/
in the context /_est/.

Ganong effect :Finding that the boundaries between phonetic categories are affected by
lexical status.

-Fixation When a reader's gaze is resting on a particular word or part of a word, as measured
by eye-tracking.

-Saccade Eye movement during reading, from one fixation point to the next.

-visual buffer:Part of working memory which temporarily holds a small amount of visual
information

-working memory :Limited-capacity workbench where information is manipulated. Also

known as short-term memory.

-cue trading In cases where multiple cues are used to identify, e.g., a phoneme, it is
sometimes the case that strong evidence from one cue will make the listener less dependent
on other cues.

-Coarticulation :Influence on the production of one sound from neighbouring sounds, because
of how they run together in speech.

-signal continuity :Flow in the speech signal that indicates that it comes from a single source.
Helps speakers track a voice and comprehend what it is saying. Contributes to the cocktail
party effect.

-perceptual streaming :Separation of speech and non-speech sounds as coming from different
sources - even when they are heard at the same time - by the human perceptual system.

-phoneme restoration :Perceptual phenomenon where listeners report a word as being intact
when in fact a phoneme has been replaced by a non-speech sound such as a cough.

-cue integration :In perception, the ability of the listener to make use of different pieces of
information, putting them together to identify a sound.

-Prime :Stimulus presented early in an experiment and which bears some relationship to a
subsequent stimulus (the probe).

-Exemplar :Rich memory representations for, e.g., words, and which include information
about the speaker (age, sex, social grouping, dialect, etc), as well as possibly about the time
and place of the utterance, and so on.

-Spectrogram:Visual representation of the acoustic analysis of speech in which time is on the

horizontal axis, sound frequency on the vertical axis, and intensity shown by darkness of
shading.

-dichotic listeningListening using both ears, often to different stimuli in each ear, e.g. to test
the right ear advantage.

-PrimingWhere hearing or seeing one processing unit, e.g. a word, can affect a participant's
speed and accuracy in responding to a subsequent, related processing unit.

-right ear advantage (REA)Phenomenon that most people hear speech better with their right
ears. Linked to hemispherical specialisation for language.

-deep orthography Type of relationship between spelling and pronunciation where there is a
high degree of irregularity.

-shallow orthography Where there is a predictable relationship between spelling and

pronunciation. Contrast deep orthography.

-categorical perception Hearing sounds as being clear instances of a particular phoneme, e.g.
as /b/ or /p/ rather than as more or less /b/-like.

-voice onset time (VOT) In plosives in consonant-vowel syllables, the time between the
release of the stop closure and the start of voicing for the vowel.