Luisteraars maken de balans op : akoestische cue-weging tijdens klankherkenning

Listeners rely on acoustic cues in the speech signal, such as formant frequency, formant transitions, duration and intensity, to discriminate speech sounds. To correctly perceive and recognize speech sounds, listeners must learn to combine and weigh different acoustic cues, that is, 'cue-weighting'. Languages in the world differ in the specific acoustic cues that are relevant to correctly perceive speech sound contrasts and in the relative importance of each cue. The development of acoustic cue-weighting starts at an early age already. but takes several years to reach adult-like levels. Factors that can influence this development are, for instance, second language acquisition, hearing impairment, and speech and language difficulties. To investigate acoustic cue weighting, researchers typically manipulate one or more acoustic cues of a specific contrast in intermediate steps to create a stimulus continuum of sound variants in between the two endpoints of the contrast. Participants are then asked to discriminate or categorize those stimuli. Several dependent variables can be derived from the analysis of cue weighting experiments, including measures of the use of each acoustic cue by listeners and of the relative weighting of different cues. In addition to the important contribution to theoretical and applied research on sound perception in second language acquisition, acoustic cue weighting can provide useful information for clinical intervention studies through the identification of acoustic cues that present persistent difficulties to the phonological development in, for example, deaf and hard- of hearing children. Furthermore, acoustic cue weighting can also directly be the target of intervention, for instance, in studies aimed at training and/or reinforcing the use of specific acoustic cues to support speech perception.