Week 5

PSY 417 Week 5 Participation Notes
Topics:
What is language? Perspectives from animal communication (continued)
Development of speech
Development of words and sentences
Learning Outcomes:
1. Describe basic properties of speech and the human speech perception system
2. Compare and contrast major theories of speech perception
Examples of achieving the learning outcomes (write out more examples for yourself)
(1) Auditory processing begins when sound waves enter the ear. After traveling along
the auditory canal to the eardrum, ossicles (three small bones) in the middle ear
vibrate to amplify the sound. In the cochlea, hair cells along the basilar membrane
convert the sound to electrical signal that gets transmitted to the brain ...
(2) Both motor theory and embodied theory of speech perception hypothesize that
there is a close link between speech perception and production systems. By contrast
the auditory theory of speech perception hypothesizes that speech perception comes
from general properties of the auditory system (with little to do with the speech
production system). ...
Practice Exam Questions
1. Which empirical finding is consistent with the motor theory of speech perception?
a. There is a close link between perception + production systems
b. Some properties of speech perception rely on properties of the auditory
system that are shared across species
c. Speech perception recruits areas of the brain involved in motor control of the
tongue, lips, etc. – not a domain-specific module in the brain
d. Speech perception doesn’t seem to be innate or species-specific
2. Which brain region is used more in reading than in spoken language
understanding?
a. Primary motor cortex
b. Premotor cortex
c. Broca’s area
d. Primary visual cortex

3. Which of these parts of the ear is primarily responsible for converting mechanical
sound to an electrical signal?
a. auditory canal
b. cochlea
c. eardrum
d. pinna
4. Tonotopic organization is found in...
a. primary auditory cortex
b. the basilar membrane
c. the cochlea
d. all of the above
5. Intracranial recordings show that phonetic features (e.g., manner of articulation)
are represented in...
a. Left inferior frontal gyrus
b. Superior temporal gyrus
c. Premotor cortex
d. Superior temporal sulcus
6. Which theory proposes speech perception is specific to humans?
a. Auditory theory
b. Motor theory
c. Embodied theory
d. All of the above
7. Describe several different types of variability found in speech sounds