Prosodic cues to word boundaries in a segmentation task assessed using reverse correlation

Description

When listening to speech sounds, listeners are able to exploit acoustic features that mark the boundaries between successive words, the so-called segmentation cues. These cues are typically investigated by directly manipulating features that are hypothetically related to segmentation. The current study uses a different approach based on reverse correlation, where the stimulus manipulations are based on minimal experimental assumptions. The method was evaluated using pairs of phonemically-identical sentences in French, whose prosody was changed in each trial by introducing random f0 trajectories and segment durations. Our results support a prominent perceptual role of the f0 rise and vowel duration at the beginning of content words.

Abstract

International audience

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