Cover not available
Article published In:
Concentric
Vol. 46:2 (2020) ► pp.148–172

The role of duration in speech plans uncovered by startling auditory stimulus

| National Taiwan University

This study investigated how speech targets of different durations may be specified in speech plans and the release in response to startling auditory stimulus (SAS) triggering. In particular, we examined whether differentiated musical training background affects responses in terms of the preservation of duration. The results show that facilitated reaction time (RT) is only observed in SAS-induced responses shorter than 500 ms, suggesting that targets longer than 500 ms may not be as susceptible to SAS-induced rapid release. While both musically trained and untrained participants lacked accuracy in producing targets with fixed durations, they were able to differentiate syllable lengths, even though duration does not denote phonemic contrasts in Mandarin. The results also show a degree of compensation to elevated pitch level from musically trained participants, suggesting that they may have a higher sensitivity to pitch level even within a limited duration window.

Keywords: syllable duration, speech planning, startling auditory stimulus, the StartReact effect
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Experiment I
    • 2.1Methods
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Apparatus, task, and procedures
      • 2.1.3Data preparation, reduction and analyses
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Startle rate and EMG burst onset
    • 3.2Acoustic responses
      • 3.2.1Acoustic RT
      • 3.2.2Duration
      • 3.2.3Pitch
      • 3.2.4Formants
  • 4.Experiment II
    • 4.1Methods
      • 4.1.1Participants
      • 4.1.2Apparatus, task, recording equipment and procedures
      • 4.1.3Data preparation, reduction and analyses
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1EMG burst onset
    • 5.2Acoustic responses
      • 5.2.1Acoustic RT
      • 5.2.2Duration
      • 5.2.3Pitch
      • 5.2.4Formants
  • 6.General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 28 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.00016.chi
References
Carlsen, Anthony N., and Dana Maslovat
2019 Startle and the StartReact effect: Physiological mechanisms. Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology 36.6:452–459. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlsen, Anthony N., Dana Maslovat, and Ian M. Franks
2012 Preparation for voluntary movement in healthy and clinical populations: Evidence from startle. Clinical Neurophysiology 123.1:21–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlsen, Anthony N., Dana Maslovat, Melanie Y. Lam, Romeo Chua, and Ian M. Franks
2011 Considerations for the use of a startling acoustic stimulus in studies of motor preparation in humans. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 35.3:366–376. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlsen, Anthony N., Romeo Chua, John Timothy Inglis, David J. Sanderson, and Ian M. Franks
2003 Startle response is dishabituated during a reaction time task. Experimental Brain Research 152.4:510–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 Prepared movements are elicited early by startle. Journal of Motor Behaviour 36.3:253–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiu, Chenhao, and Bryan Gick
2014a Pitch planning in English and Taiwanese Mandarin: Evidence from startle-elicited responses. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 136.4:EL322–EL328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014b Startling speech: Eliciting prepared speech using startling auditory stimulus. Frontiers in Psychology 51, article no. 1082. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cicchini, Guido Marco, Roberto Arrighi, Luca Cecchetti, Marco Giusti, and David C. Burr
2012 Optimal encoding of interval timing in expert percussionists. Journal of Neuroscience 32.3:1056–1060. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Lisa
2006 Comparing tongue shapes from ultrasound imaging using smoothing spline analysis of variance. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 120.1:407–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Derrick, Donald, and Benjamin Schultz
2013 Acoustic correlates of flaps in North American English. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (ICA 2013 Montreal), vol. 19, no. 060260, ed. by Kent. L. Gee. Montreal, Canada: Acoustical Society of America. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geiser, Eveline, and John D. E. Gabrieli
2013 Influence of rhythmic grouping on duration perception: A novel auditory illusion. PLoS One 8.1, article no. e54273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gu, Bon-Mi, and Warren H. Meck
2011 New perspectives on Vierordt’s law: Memory-mixing in ordinal temporal comparison tasks. Multidisciplinary Aspects of Time and Time Perception, ed. by Argiro Vatakis, Anna Esposito, Maria Giagkou, Fred Cummins and Georgios Papadelis, 67–78. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Güçlü, Burak, Emre Sevinc, and Resit Canbeyli
2011 Duration discrimination by musicians and nonmusicians. Psychological Reports 108.3:675–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hain, Timothy C., Theresa A. Burnett, Swathi Kiran, Charles R. Larson, Shajila Singh, and Mary K. Kenney
2000 Instructing subjects to make a voluntary response reveals the presence of two components to the audio-vocal reflex. Experimental Brain Research 1301:133–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jeon, Jin Y., and Fergus R. Fricke
1997 Duration of perceived and performed sounds. Psychology of Music 25.1:70–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Jeffery A., and Dwayne Keough
2008 Auditory-motor mapping for pitch control in singers and nonsingers. Experimental Brain Research 1901:279–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Jeffery A., and Kevin G. Munhall
2002 The role of auditory feedback during phonation: Studies of Mandarin tone production. Journal of Phonetics 301:303–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klapp, Stuart T.
1977 Reaction time analysis of programmed control. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews 5.1:231–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995 Motor response programming during simple and choice reaction time: The role of practice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 21.5:1015–1027.Google Scholar
2003 Reaction time analysis of two types of motor preparation for speech articulation: Action as a sequence of chunks. Journal of Motor Behavior 35.2:135–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larson, Charles R., Kenneth W. Altman, Hanjun Liu, and Timothy C. Hain
2008 Interactions between auditory and somatosensory feedback for voice F0 control. Experimental Brain Research 1871:613–621. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lejeune, Helga, and John H. Wearden
2009 Vierordt’s the experimental study of the time sense (1868) and its legacy. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 21.6:941–960. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levelt, William. J. M., Ardi Roelofs, and Antje S. Meyer
1999 A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22.1:1–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maslovat, Dana, Romeo Chua, Anthony N. Carlsen, Christopher J. Forgaard, and Ian M. Franks
2015 A startling acoustic stimulus interferes with upcoming motor preparation: Evidence for a startle refractory period. Acta Psychologica 1581:36–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maslovat, Dana, Romeo Chua, Hunter C. Spencer, Christopher J. Forgaard, Anthony N. Carlsen, and Ian M. Franks
2013 Evidence for a response preparation bottleneck during dual-task performances: Effect of a startling acoustic stimulus on the psychological refractory period. Acta Psychologica 144.3:481–487. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maslovat, Dana, Romeo Chua, and Ian M. Franks
2017 Investigation of timing preparation during response initiation and execution using a startling acoustic stimulus. Experimental Brain Research 235.1:15–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maslovat, Dana, Stuart T. Klapp, Richard J. Jagacinski, and Ian M. Franks
2014 Control of response timing occurs during the simple reaction time interval but on-line for choice reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 40.5:2005–2021.Google Scholar
Murry, Thomas
1990 Pitch-matching accuracy in singers and nonsingers. Journal of Voice 4.4:317–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
1998 Occupational Noise Exposure: Revised Criteria 1998. Criteria for a recommended standard, DHHC (NIOSH) Publication no. 98–126. Cincinnati, OH: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Google Scholar
Oude Nijhuis, Lars B., Loes Janssen, Bastiaan R. Bloem, J. Gert Van Dijk, Stan C. Gielen, George F. Borm, and Sebastiaan Overeem
2007 Choice reaction times for human head rotations are shortened by startling acoustic stimuli, irrespective of stimulus direction. The Journal of Physiology 584.1:97–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shi, Zhuanghua, Russell M. Church, and Warren H. Meck
2013 Bayesian optimization of time perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17.11:556–564. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, Andrew J., Chenhao Chiu, Dana Maslovat, Romeo Chua, Bryan Gick, Jean-Sébastien Blouin, and Ian M. Franks
2014 Cortical involvement in the StartReact effect. Neuroscience 2691:21–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tseng, Chiu-yu, and Yeh-lin Lee
2004 Speech rate and prosody units: Evidence of interaction from Mandarin Chinese. Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2004 (SP-2004), ed. by Bernard Bel and Isabelle Marlien, 251–254. Nara, Japan: ISCA Archive.Google Scholar
Valls-Solé, Josep, Hatice Kumru, and Markus Kofler
2008 Interaction between startle and voluntary reactions in humans. Experimental Brain Research 1871:497–507. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valls-Solé, Josep, John C. Rothwell, Fatima Goulart, Giovanni Cossu, and Esteban Muñoz
1999 Patterned ballistic movements triggered by a startle in healthy humans. The Journal of Physiology 516.3:931–938. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wadman, Wytse. J., J. J. Denier van der Gon, Reine H. Geuze, and C. R. Mol
1979 Control of fast goal-directed arm movements. Journal of Human Movement Studies 51:3–17.Google Scholar
Watts, Christopher, Jessica Murphy, and Kathryn Barnes-Burroughs
2003 Pitch matching accuracy of trained singers, untrained subjects with talented singing voices, and untrained subjects with nontalented singing voices in conditions of varying feedback. Journal of Voice 17.2:185–194. DOI logoGoogle Scholar