Prenatal learning of speech rhythm and melody is well documented. Much less is known about the earliest acquisition of segmental speech categories. We tested whether newborn infants perceive native vowels, but not nonspeech sounds, through some existing (proto-)categories, and whether they do so more robustly for some vowels than for others. Sensory event-related potentials (ERP), and mismatch responses (MMR), were obtained from 104 neonates acquiring Czech. The ERPs elicited by vowels were larger than the ERPs to nonspeech sounds, and reflected the differences between the individual vowel categories. The MMRs to changes in vowels but not in nonspeech sounds revealed left-lateralized asymmetrical processing patterns: a change from a focal [a] to a nonfocal [ɛ], and the change from short [ɛ] to long [ɛ:] elicited more negative MMR responses than reverse changes. Contrary to predictions, we did not find evidence of a developmental advantage for vowel length contrasts (supposedly most readily available in utero) over vowel quality contrasts (supposedly less salient in utero). An explanation for these asymmetries in terms of differential degree of prior phonetic warping of speech sounds is proposed. Future studies with newborns with different language backgrounds should test whether the prenatal learning scenario proposed here is plausible.

• MeSH
• elektroencefalografie MeSH
• evokované potenciály MeSH
• fonetika MeSH
• kojenec MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• novorozenec MeSH
• percepce řeči * fyziologie   MeSH
• řeč MeSH
• těhotenství MeSH
• Check Tag
• kojenec MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• novorozenec MeSH
• těhotenství MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

AIMS: Patients with the Pendred syndrome suffer very often from a hearing loss. They may be good candidates for a cochlear implantation, but unfortunately, due to the fluctuating character of the hearing loss, they may escape such indication. In the study, we compared speech production and speech acquisition in 2 groups of implanted patients: those with the Pendred syndrome, and standard non-syndromic patients. METHODS: Ten patients with Pendred syndrome were analyzed for speech perception and production. The control group consisted of 41 non-syndromic implanted patients. All implantees were scored according to speech perception, speech production, and the sum of both. The data were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: No statistical difference was found in language acquisition and production in implantees with Pendred syndrome when compared to non-syndromic patients with cochlear implants. Nor there was any difference in speech production and acquisition between the 2 compared groups regarding surgical age, time elapsed after surgery, or age during the testing. CONCLUSION: In this study evaluating language and speech production and acquisition, patients with Pendred syndrome who underwent cochlear implants show comparable results to their implanted peers with deafness of a different etiology.

• MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• kochleární implantáty normy   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• nedoslýchavost etiologie   chirurgie   MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• percepční nedoslýchavost komplikace   psychologie   chirurgie   MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• uzlová struma komplikace   psychologie   chirurgie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

Seeing a person's mouth move for [ga] while hearing [ba] often results in the perception of "da." Such audiovisual integration of speech cues, known as the McGurk effect, is stable within but variable across individuals. When the visual or auditory cues are degraded, due to signal distortion or the perceiver's sensory impairment, reliance on cues via the impoverished modality decreases. This study tested whether cue-reliance adjustments due to exposure to reduced cue availability are persistent and transfer to subsequent perception of speech with all cues fully available. A McGurk experiment was administered at the beginning and after a month of mandatory face-mask wearing (enforced in Czechia during the 2020 pandemic). Responses to audio-visually incongruent stimuli were analyzed from 292 persons (ages 16-55), representing a cross-sectional sample, and 41 students (ages 19-27), representing a longitudinal sample. The extent to which the participants relied exclusively on visual cues was affected by testing time in interaction with age. After a month of reduced access to lipreading, reliance on visual cues (present at test) somewhat lowered for younger and increased for older persons. This implies that adults adapt their speech perception faculty to an altered environmental availability of multimodal cues, and that younger adults do so more efficiently. This finding demonstrates that besides sensory impairment or signal noise, which reduce cue availability and thus affect audio-visual cue reliance, having experienced a change in environmental conditions can modulate the perceiver's (otherwise relatively stable) general bias towards different modalities during speech communication.

• MeSH
• COVID-19 prevence a kontrola   MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• fyziologická adaptace fyziologie   MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• masky * MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• odezírání * MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• podněty * MeSH
• rozpoznání obličeje fyziologie   MeSH
• věkové faktory MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

The way the human brain represents speech in memory is still unknown. An obvious characteristic of speech is its evolvement over time. During speech processing, neural oscillations are modulated by the temporal properties of the acoustic speech signal, but also acquired knowledge on the temporal structure of language influences speech perception-related brain activity. This suggests that speech could be represented in the temporal domain, a form of representation that the brain also uses to encode autobiographic memories. Empirical evidence for such a memory code is lacking. We investigated the nature of speech memory representations using direct cortical recordings in the left perisylvian cortex during delayed sentence reproduction in female and male patients undergoing awake tumor surgery. Our results reveal that the brain endogenously represents speech in the temporal domain. Temporal pattern similarity analyses revealed that the phase of frontotemporal low-frequency oscillations, primarily in the beta range, represents sentence identity in working memory. The positive relationship between beta power during working memory and task performance suggests that working memory representations benefit from increased phase separation.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Memory is an endogenous source of information based on experience. While neural oscillations encode autobiographic memories in the temporal domain, little is known on their contribution to memory representations of human speech. Our electrocortical recordings in participants who maintain sentences in memory identify the phase of left frontotemporal beta oscillations as the most prominent information carrier of sentence identity. These observations provide evidence for a theoretical model on speech memory representations and explain why interfering with beta oscillations in the left inferior frontal cortex diminishes verbal working memory capacity. The lack of sentence identity coding at the syllabic rate suggests that sentences are represented in memory in a more abstract form compared with speech coding during speech perception and production.

• MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• elektrokortikografie MeSH
• krátkodobá paměť fyziologie   MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mozek fyziologie   MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• řeč fyziologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

Processing of memory is supported by coordinated activity in a network of sensory, association, and motor brain regions. It remains a major challenge to determine where memory is encoded for later retrieval. Here, we used direct intracranial brain recordings from epilepsy patients performing free recall tasks to determine the temporal pattern and anatomical distribution of verbal memory encoding across the entire human cortex. High γ frequency activity (65-115 Hz) showed consistent power responses during encoding of subsequently recalled and forgotten words on a subset of electrodes localized in 16 distinct cortical areas activated in the tasks. More of the high γ power during word encoding, and less power before and after the word presentation, was characteristic of successful recall and observed across multiple brain regions. Latencies of the induced power changes and this subsequent memory effect (SME) between the recalled and forgotten words followed an anatomical sequence from visual to prefrontal cortical areas. Finally, the magnitude of the memory effect was unexpectedly found to be the largest in selected brain regions both at the top and at the bottom of the processing stream. These included the language processing areas of the prefrontal cortex and the early visual areas at the junction of the occipital and temporal lobes. Our results provide evidence for distributed encoding of verbal memory organized along a hierarchical posterior-to-anterior processing stream.

• MeSH
• časové faktory MeSH
• elektrokortikografie MeSH
• gama rytmus EEG fyziologie   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mapování mozku MeSH
• mozková kůra fyziologie   patofyziologie   MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• refrakterní epilepsie patofyziologie   psychologie   MeSH
• rozpomínání fyziologie   MeSH
• slovní zásoba MeSH
• zraková percepce fyziologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• multicentrická studie MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. MeSH

A number of studies in different languages have shown that speakers may be sensitive to the presence of inflectional morphology in the absence of verb meaning (Caramazza et al. in Cognition 28(3):297-332, 1988; Clahsen in Behav Brain Sci 22(06):991-1013, 1999; Post et al. in Cognition 109(1):1-17, 2008). In this study, sensitivity to inflectional morphemes was tested in a purposely developed task with English-like nonwords. Native speakers of English were presented with pairs of nonwords and were asked to judge whether the two nonwords in each pair were the same or different. Each pair was composed either of the same nonword repeated twice, or of two slightly different nonwords. The nonwords were created taking advantage of a specific morphophonological property of English, which is that regular inflectional morphemes agree in voicing with the ending of the stem. Using stems ending in /l/, thus, we created: (1) nonwords ending in potential inflectional morphemes, vɔld, (2) nonwords without inflectional morphemes, vɔlt, and (3) a phonological control condition, vɔlb. Our new task endorses some strengths presented in previous work. As in Post et al. (2008) the task accounts for the importance of phonological cues to morphological processing. In addition, as in Caramazza et al. (1988) and contrary to Post et al. (2008), the task never presents bare-stems, making it unlikely that the participants would be aware of the manipulation performed. Our results are in line with Caramazza et al. (1988), Clahsen (1999) and Post et al. (2008), and offer further evidence that morphologically inflected nonwords take longer to be discriminated compared to uninflected nonwords.

• MeSH
• diskriminace (psychologie) MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• fonetika MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• psycholingvistika * MeSH
• reakční čas fyziologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

This paper focuses on a novel methodology of subjective speech quality measurement and repeatability of its results between laboratory conditions and simulated environmental conditions. A single set of speech samples was distorted by various background noises and low bit-rate coding techniques. This study aimed to compare results of subjective speech quality tests with and without a parallel task deploying the ITU-T P.835 methodology. Afterward, tests results performed with and without a parallel task were compared using Pearson correlation, CI95, and numbers of opposite pair-wise comparisons. The tests show differences in results in the case of a parallel task.

• MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• hluk * MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• plnění a analýza úkolů * MeSH
• řeč fyziologie   MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• srozumitelnost řeči * MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• srovnávací studie MeSH

Cieľ: Zmapovať porozumenie viet u slovensky hovoriacich pacientov s Parkinsonovou chorobou. Metóda: Testom porozumenia viet sa testovalo porozumenie reverzibilných viet (vety, v ktorých si účastníci deja môžu vymeniť svoje úlohy) a kognitívne funkcie neuropsychologickou testovou batériou. Vzorka: Na výskume sa zúčastnilo 37 pacientov s idiopatickou Parkinsonovou chorobou a 37 zdravých respondentov. Skupiny sa nelíšili vzhľadom na vek, vzdelanie a pohlavie. Diagnózu Parkinsonovej choroby u pacientov stanovil neurológ. Výsledky: Štatistické spracovanie dát Mann-Whitneyho U-testom ukázalo, že pacienti dosahovali signifikantne nižšie skóre len v jednom zo šiestich typov viet (p = 0,016), a to v porozumení včlenených vzťažných viet objektových (napr. Mama, ktorú bozkáva dcéra, má svetlé šaty.). Signifikantne horší boli aj v dekódovaní viet s nekanonickým poradím sémantických rolí (najprv patiens, potom agens; p = 0,013). Signifikantné korelácie jednotlivých syntaktických konštrukcií sa objavili hlavne s testami: Reyova figúra, Sémantická (verbálna) fluencia a Opakovaním čísel a písmen. Záver: Výsledky preukazujú prítomné deficity v porozumení viet u slovensky hovoriacich pacientov s Parkinsonovou chorobou, pričom schopnosť porozumieť vetám koreluje s výkonom v kognitívnych testoch.

Aim: To map the sentence comprehension in Slovak-speaking patients with Parkinson disease. Method: We assessed the comprehension of reversible sentences (sentences in which the participants of the action can change their roles) with the Test of sentence comprehension and cognitive functions with a standard neuropsychological battery. Subjects: 37 patients with idiopathic Parkinson disease and 37 healthy controls participated in the research. Groups did not differ regarding age, education and sex. The diagnosis of Parkinson disease in patients was established by a neurologist. Results: The statistical comparison of data using the Mann-Whitney U test revealed that patients had a significantly lower score only in one out of six sentence types (p = 0.016), namely in comprehension of center-embedded object relative clauses (e. g. Mother, which the daughter kissed, has the light dress.). They were significantly worse also in decoding sentences with non-canonical order of thematic roles (first patient, then agent; p = 0.013). Significant correlations of individual syntactic constructions appeared in three tests: Rey Complex Figure Test, Semantic fluency and Letter-Number sequencing. Conclusion: According to our results, there are sentence comprehension deficits in Slovak-speaking patients with Parkinson disease, while sentence comprehension ability is correlated with cognitive test performance.

• MeSH
• jazykové testy * normy   statistika a číselné údaje   MeSH
• kognitivní dysfunkce * diagnóza   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• neparametrická statistika MeSH
• Parkinsonova nemoc * diagnóza   MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• studie případů a kontrol MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

A method is presented in which conventional speech algorithms are applied, with no modifications, to improve their performance in extremely noisy environments. It has been demonstrated that, for eigen-channel algorithms, pre-training multiple speaker identification (SID) models at a lattice of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) levels and then performing SID using the appropriate SNR dependent model was successful in mitigating noise at all SNR levels. In those tests, it was found that SID performance was optimized when the SNR of the testing and training data were close or identical. In this current effort multiple i-vector algorithms were used, greatly improving both processing throughput and equal error rate classification accuracy. Using identical approaches in the same noisy environment, performance of SID, language identification, gender identification, and diarization were significantly improved. A critical factor in this improvement is speech activity detection (SAD) that performs reliably in extremely noisy environments, where the speech itself is barely audible. To optimize SAD operation at all SNR levels, two algorithms were employed. The first maximized detection probability at low levels (-10 dB ≤ SNR < +10 dB) using just the voiced speech envelope, and the second exploited features extracted from the original speech to improve overall accuracy at higher quality levels (SNR ≥ +10 dB).

• MeSH
• algoritmy * MeSH
• hluk * MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• počítačové zpracování signálu MeSH
• poměr signál - šum * MeSH
• řeč * MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

Listeners usually understand without difficulty even speech that sounds atypical. When they encounter noncanonical realizations of speech sounds, listeners can make short-term adjustments of their long-term representations of those sounds. Previous research, focusing mostly on adaptation in consonants, has suggested that for perceptual adaptation to take place some local cues (lexical, phonotactic, or visual) have to guide listeners' interpretation of the atypical sounds. In the present experiment we investigated perceptual adaptation in vowels. Our first aim was to show whether perceptual adaptation generalizes to unexposed but phonologically related vowels. To this end, we exposed Greek listeners to words or nonwords containing manipulated /i/ or /e/, and tested whether they adapted their perception of the /i/-/e/ contrast, as well as the unexposed /u/-/o/ contrast, which represents the same phonological height distinction. Our second aim was to test whether perceptual adaptation in vowels requires local context. Thus, a half of our listeners heard the manipulated vowels in real Greek words, while the other half heard them in nonwords providing no phonotactic cues on vowel identity. The results showed similar adjustment of /i/-/e/ categorization and of /u/-/o/ categorization, which indicates generalization of perceptual adaptation across phonologically related vowels. Furthermore, adaptation occurred irrespective of whether local context cues were present or not, suggesting that, at least in vowels, adaptation can be based on the distribution of auditory properties in the input. Our findings, confirming that fast perceptual adaptation in adult listeners occurs even for vowels, highlight the role of phonological abstraction in speech perception. (PsycINFO Database Record

• MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• fonetika * MeSH
• fyziologická adaptace fyziologie   MeSH
• generalizace (psychologie) fyziologie   MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• percepce řeči fyziologie   MeSH
• psycholingvistika * MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH