Analysis of theoretical approaches to speech perception

Analysis of theoretical approaches to speech perception Speech perception is vital to language used in day to day lives. When someone speaks, the air pressure fluctuates and the waves strike the ears and in some way the individual turns these sound waves into meaningful consideration what the speaker is saying about. So, speech perception is important for human communication (Smith 2007). The core concept in speech perception is to explain the mechanism of perceiving the words correctly despite of inconsistent information provided by speech signals. It can be understood by the fact that human can perceive as many as fifty phonemes per second in a language in which the individual is fluent. This suggests that speech is perceived with marked rapidity. On contrary when the individual is not fluent in a particular language (e.g. foreign language) can perceive only about two third of single phone per second (of non speech sound) (Sternberg 2009:351). Over the last five decades researcher in the field of speech perception focused more attentio n on establishing the relationship between the properties of acoustic signal and linguistic components (phonemes and distinctive features). This has turned out the result to be more complex, and still how human perceive speech is not ascertain. Thus, this extensive research for explanation has given rise to important theoretical perspective on speech perception (ncbi 2009). The purpose of this essay is to critically evaluate various theoretical approaches toward speech perception. The most influential theories of speech perception include Motor theory, Cohort theory, and TRACE model (Eysenck 1995:280). First the essay will scrutinize the main claims proposed by motor theory; then it will examine the critique of cohort theory and finally analyze the TRACE model. A conclusion can be drawn that among all of these above mentioned theories cohort theory is better, scientific, and there is good evidence which suggests rationale justification of speech perception (moodle.coventry.ac.uk n.d .). The motor theory was the first and the most influential theory of speech perception proposed by Liberman et al. (1967). This theory is based on the following assumptions: Speech perception is perception of the articulatory gestures. ‘Phenomenon of speech perception as special’ (Sternberg 2009:352). Involvement of the motor system in perception of the speech (ncbi 2009). Speech perception is perception of articulatory phonetic gestures. ‘Listeners engage in a certain amount of mimicking of articulatory movements of the speaker’ (Eysenck 1995: 280). This is a controversial claim of the motor theory of speech perception, it state that the phonetic gestures produced in the air are not the objects of speech perception; instead the gestures of the vocal tract of the speaker are the real objects of speech perception (ncbi 2009). The evidence which supports this claim that the object of speech perception is gestural and not acoustic is the finding that ‘t he hand motor system to be activated by linguistic tasks, most notably pure linguistic perception but not by auditory or visuospatial processing’ (ebscohost 2003) ‘Phenomenon of speech perception as special’ (Sternberg, P.352): It is difficult to evaluate this claim because the term ‘special’ in itself is ambiguous. At least three possibilities can be drawn by the term ‘special’ as speech perception is special with respect to audition or speech perception is special with respect to audition that mean application of motor system in speech perception or speech is produced and process by a special neural track (ncbi 2009). There are no sufficient evidence available to support this claim so, should probably be retarded (talkingbrains 2008).

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