语境性别影响元音和辅音范畴感知的计算建模研究
Computational Modeling of Contextual Gender Effects on Categorical Perception of Vowels and Stops
黄健 1刘顺 2王穗苹1
作者信息
- 1. “儿童青少年阅读与发展”教育部哲学社会科学实验室(华南师范大学);华南师范大学广东省心理健康和认知科学重点实验室;华南师范大学心理学院
- 2. “儿童青少年阅读与发展”教育部哲学社会科学实验室(华南师范大学);湖南第一师范学院教育学院
- 折叠
摘要
语音感知会受到环境因素的影响，说话人归一化是其中的重要方面。大量研究表明环境说话人的语音特点会影响听者对目标语音类别的判断，但是这种环境效应对语音感知的潜在认知过程的作用机制还不清楚。我们在4个实验中，分别考察了环境音性别对元音共振峰和辅音浊音起始时间（VOT）连续体范畴化感知的影响。利用线性弹道累加器（LBA）模型对判断类别和反应时进行综合性的计算建模分析，我们发现，环境音性别显著影响元音和VOT判断的感觉编码时间、决策阈限和信息转化效率。这些结果表明说话人线索会影响语音感知的多个潜在认知过程，但存在一定的语音特征特异性，支持了环境效应的多重作用机制。
Abstract
Speech perception is influenced by contextual factors, which significantly shape how listeners map acoustic cues to linguistic categories. This phenomenon is often revealed through speech categorization tasks, yet the precise cognitive-computational processes underlying these contextual effects remain underexplored. Previous research has established that speaker-specific characteristics, such as gender, systematically modulate speech perception, well known as talker normalization. However, a comprehensive understanding of how talker normalization is integrated into the real-time perceptual decision-making process is still lacking. This study applied a linear ballistic accumulator (LBA) model to analyze listeners behavioral data from vowel and stop continuum tasks, aiming to elucidate the computational cognitive mechanisms of talker normalization.To this end, we conducted four experiments, testing how contextual gender influences the perception of vowel formants and stop voice onset time (VOT). Experiments 1a and 1b used male and female nine-step vowel continua (ranging from [a] to [e]), respectively, while Experiments 2a and 2b employed male and female nine-step stop continua ([k] [kh]). In each trial, a continuum stimulus was preceded by a sentence spoken by either a male or a female talker, thereby manipulating the contextual gender. Listeners provided a two-alternative forced-choice judgment, and we collected their categorical responses and reaction times for analysis.Our analysis, utilizing an LBA model that allowed contextual gender to modulate decision threshold (b), non-decision time (t), and drift rate (v), provided the best fit to the data across all four experiments. The modulation of drift rate by contextual gender was consistent with the pattern observed in participants' categorical responses, revealing assimilation effects for vowel perception and compensation effects for stop perception. Furthermore, female contexts consistently prolonged non-decision time and reduced decision threshold compared to male contexts in Experiments 1a, 2a, and 2b. However, these effects were absent for the female vowel target (Experiment 1b), suggesting that target talker gender modulates the expression of contextual effects in a feature-specific manner.These results provide computational evidence for multi-stage cognitive mechanisms underlying contextual effects on speech perception, as revealed by the LBA framework. By integrating categorical responses and reaction times, the LBA model allowed us to pinpoint specific subprocesses affected by contextsensory encoding (t), evidence accumulation efficiency (v), and decision criterion (b)going beyond simply observing shifts in categorization functions. The differential modulation of these latent processes by contextual gender for formants and VOT suggests a feature-specific, multifaceted mechanism by which environmental factors influence speech perception. Crucially, this evidence-accumulation framework provides a powerful tool for disentangling the complex interplay between acoustic cues and cognitive processes, enhancing our understanding of how contextual variability shapes flexible speech categorization across diverse listening environments. This constitutes a finer-grained account of contextual effects than traditional analyses based solely on categorization shifts.关键词
语音感知/说话人归一化/元音/塞音/线性弹道累加器模型Key words
speech perception/talker normalization/vowel/stop/linear ballistic accumulator model引用本文复制引用
黄健,刘顺,王穗苹.语境性别影响元音和辅音范畴感知的计算建模研究[EB/OL].(2026-08-29)[2026-09-01].https://chinaxiv.org/abs/202608.00196.学科分类
语言学
