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The relation of articulatory and laryngeal auditory–motor control in tonal language speakers
Poster Session C, Friday, October 25, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Ding-Lan Tang1, Win-Yin Chan1, Siu-Hin Choi1, Hiu-To Chu1; 1University of Hong Kong
Background: Speech production is one of the most complicated motor behaviour involving multiple subsystems. Recent studies in non-tonal language speakers found no significant correlation between articulatory and laryngeal auditory-motor control subsystems. However, in non-tonal languages, articulatory parameters such as formants are used to convey phonemic identity, while laryngeal parameters such as the fundamental frequency (F0) primarily affect prosody. In contrast, in tonal languages (e.g. Mandarin and Cantonese), F0 (i.e., tones) are also used to change phonemic identity. In addition, speech production relies on both feedback and feedforward control. Previous work investigating the relationship between feedback and feedforward control of articulatory and laryngeal subsystems have yielded mixed results. Purpose: The current study aimed to examine 1) the relationship between articulatory and laryngeal auditory–motor control and 2) the relationship between feedback and feedforward systems during both articulatory and laryngeal control in tonal language speakers using altered auditory feedback paradigms. Methods: Seventeen (aiming for twenty) healthy native Cantonese speakers (all female) produced single Cantonese words (“車(cε1)”—car, “吃(hεk6)”—eat, “石(sεk3)”—stone, containing the same vowel /ε/), while the first formant (F1) or F0 of their auditory feedback was suddenly and unpredictably perturbed to assess reflexive responses or gradually and predictably perturbed to assess adaptive responses (F0: +100 cents; F1: + 110 mels). Results: On average, Cantonese speakers exhibited significant reflexive responses of -16.1 (± 6.2) cents and adaptive responses of -34.8 (± 52.3) cents to the unpredictable and predictable F0 perturbations, respectively. Participants also produced significant reflexive responses of -4.7 (± 7.4) mels and adaptive responses of -29.3 (± 32.3) mels to the unpredictable and predictable F1 perturbations. However, similar to previous findings in non-tonal language speakers, no statistically significant correlations were found between F0 and F1 reflexive responses or F0 and F1 adaptive responses in the current study. In addition, Cantonese speakers’ reflexive responses to unpredictable perturbations were not related to their adaptive responses to predictable perturbations during both articulatory (F1) and laryngeal (F0) control. Conclusion: These findings indicate that 1) auditory-motor control mechanisms of the articulatory and laryngeal speech production subsystems operate differently, regardless of the linguistic role of acoustic parameters in tonal or non-tonal languages; 2) there are disparate feedback and feedforward control mechanisms for both laryngeal and articulatory subsystems in tonal language speakers. The combined results provide support for differing feedback and feedforward mechanisms for both laryngeal and articulatory control in typical speakers.
Topic Areas: Speech Motor Control, Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration