SPOKEN WORD ACCESS PROCESSES (SWAP) May 29-31, 2000 Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Lipreading and the compensation for coarticulation mechanism

Jean Vroomen, Beatrice de Gelder

Department of Psychology, University of Tilburg

Listeners compensate for coarticulatory influences of one speech sound on another. We examined whether lipread information penetrates this perceptual compensation mechanism. Experiment 1 replicated that when an /as/ or /a• / sound preceded a /ta/-/ka/ continuum, more velar stops were perceived in the context of /as/ ([1]). Experiments 2 and 3 investigated whether the same phoneme boundary shift would be obtained when the context was lipread instead of heard. An ambiguous sound between /as/ and /a• / was dubbed on the video of a speaker articulating /as/ or /a• /. Subjects relied on the lipread information when identifying the ambiguous fricative sound, but there was no boundary shift in the following /ta/-/ka/ continuum. These results indicate that biasing of the fricative and compensation for coarticulation can be dissociated. 

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Vroomen, Jean / Gelder, Beatrice de (2000): "Lipreading and the compensation for coarticulation mechanism", In SWAP-2000, 83-86.