• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.139-148
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• 2000

This paper reports the results of an experimental phonetic study of intonation contrasts perception by speakers of British English, Japanese and Russian. Six series of re-synthesized two-syllable rise-fall contours with manipulated parameters of the rise in the first and the fall in the second syllable were employed in the experiment. Modifications of pitch height were executed in 2 st steps, and of duration - in 30ms steps. The subjects, who were native speakers of British English, Japanese and Russian, identified the sentence type of presented re-synthesized stimuli. The results of the experiments demonstrate overall similarity of the perception strategies across the three groups of subjects, especially regarding the thresholds of 'declarative' sentence type judgement. Non-declarative judgements are more language-specific. The results can be employed for the teaching of English, Japanese and Russian as foreign languages as well as for speech synthesis and recognition.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.52-57
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• 2022

Speech consists of the sum of complex sine-waves. This study investigated the perception of electrical hearing by applying the sinusoidal model to cochlear implant simulation. Fourteen adults with normal hearing participated in this study. The sentence recognition tests were implemented using the sentence lists processed by the sinusoidal model which extracts 2, 4, 6, 8 sine-wave components and sentence lists processed by the same sinusoidal model along with cochlear implant simulation (8 channel vocoders). The results showed lower speech recognition for the sentence lists processed by the sinusoidal model and cochlear implant simulation compared to those by the sinusoidal model alone. Notably, the lower the number of sine-wave components (2), the larger the difference was. This study provides the perceptual pattern of sine-wave speech for electrical hearing by cochlear implant listeners, and basic data for development of speech processing algorithms in cochlear implants.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.2
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• pp.95-108
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• 1997

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate prosodic characteristics of English as spoken by Koreans. Test materials were four English words, a sentence, and a paragraph. Six female Korean speakers and five native English speakers participated in acoustic and perceptual experiments. Pitch and duration of word syllables were measured from signals and spectrograms made by the Signalize 3.04 software program for Power Mac 7200. In the perceptual experiment, accent position, intonation patterns, rhythm patterns and phrasing were evaluated by the five native English speakers. Preliminary results from this limited study show that prosodic characteristics of Koreans include (1) pitch on the first part of a word and sentence is lower than that of English speakers, but the pitch on the last part is the opposite; (2) word prosody is quite similar to that of an English speaker, but sentence prosody is quite different; (3) the weakest point of sentence prosody spoken by Koreans is in the rhythmic pattern.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.59-71
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• 1985

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of both social-status and mode of stimulus-presentation on children's empathic behavior, where empathy is defined as either the comprehension and recognition of an affective state in stimulus persons (others) or the empathic response to that perception. Middle-and lower-class kindergarten children were presented with a series of either short-sentence stories or short-pictorial stories. The subjects were asked to indicate how the child in each situation felt by selecting a "happy", "sad", or "angry" face to complete the picture accompanying each story. Immediately following the first question, children were asked to state verbally how the child in the picture might feel. The main results were (1) The mean empathy scores for the comprehension and recognition of an affective state in others and the empathic response to that perception was higher in middle-class children than in lower-class children. (2) There were differences in empathy scores to the three affective situations, i.e. the mean score for both happiness and sadness was significantly greater than for aggression, and (3) The empathy scores in the pictorial-stories were greater than in the sentence-stories.

• MALSORI
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• no.53
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• pp.1-16
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• 2005

This experimental study aims to test the hypothesis that the occurrence of English sentence-final stop release is, at least, partly predictable by examining its phonetic context. 10 native(5 male and 5 female) speakers of American English recorded, in a sound-proof booth, sentences excerpted from novels and the natural documents on the World Wide Web. Based on the waveforms and spectrograms of the recorded sentences, judgements of the release of a sentence-final stop were made. If the aperiodic energy of a given final stop lasted more than .015 second, it was considered to be "released." The result reveals that English sentence-final stops tend to be released when they are 1) velar consonants, 2) preceeded by tense vowels, and 3) coda consonants of content words. The phonetic environment in which final stops are often released can be characterized by the articulatory comfortableness and the need for release burst noise, without which the final stops may not be correctly perceived. By examining the release of English final stops, it is concluded that the phonological events, which had been considered to occur rather "randomly," in fact, reflect the universal tendency of human speech: to minimize the speakers' and hearers' effort.

• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.323-341
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• 2021

This study examined public perceptions of the reasons underlying sentence reduction for defendants convicted of sex crimes against persons with intellectual disability. An online survey was conducted among 522 adults in South Korea. Respondent endorsement of 20 reasons underlying sentence reduction, which were embedded within the respective rulings, and the perceived appropriateness of statutory sentence for the crimes committed were assessed. The results showed that most respondents endorsed the sentence; moreover, those who disagreed underscored the need for more severe punishment. Almost all the respondents perceived the following reasons and explanations unfavorably: impulsiveness caused by sexual arousal or alcohol consumption; an accidental occurrence; and personal characteristics such as defendant age, health condition, socioeconomic status, developmental history, and family background. However, there was a relative agreement in that the damage caused by the incident was relatively minor, or the defendant's reflection and attitude to recover the damage were used as reasons for the reduction. Differences in respondent perceptions of the reasons underlying sentence reduction as a function of gender and educational background were relatively small. However, younger respondents held harsher attitudes toward sentence reduction. The present findings underscore the need to be mindful of victims' statements and the characteristics of persons with intellectual disability while sentencing.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.112-119
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• 2002

Object:This study was to investigate the difference of speech perception ability in schizophrenic patients, and depression patients in order to explore trait-dependent speech perception ability of each disorder. Methods:The speech perception ability was assessed with masked speech tracking test(MST) in schizophrenic patients(N=31), depression patients(N=25), and normal controls(N=21). The continuous performance test(CPT) and sentence repetition test(SRT) were also used for assessment of attention and working memory. Results:The schizophrenic patients showed significant impaired MST performance, compared with depressive patients and normal controls. The performances of CPT and SRT were also more impaired in schizophrenic patients. The difference of MST performances between two patient group was cancelled out after consideration of differences in CPT & SRT performances. Conclusions:These results imply that schizophrenic patients have the impaired speech perception ability compared with depressive patients and normal controls. But speech perception ability was significantly influenced with CPT and SRT. For evaluation of pure speech perception ability, the more elaborate controlled study that excluded factors such as attention, working memory and intelligence is needed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.63-69
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• 2016

The aims of the present study are two-fold: 1) to explore differences on speech perception between younger and older adults according to noise conditions; and 2) to investigate which cognitive domains are correlated with speech perception. Data were acquired from 15 younger adults and 15 older adults. Sentence recognition test was conducted in four noise conditions(i.e., in-quiet, +5 dB SNR, 0 dB SNR, -5 dB SNR). All participants completed auditory and cognitive assessment. Upon controlling for hearing thresholds, the older group revealed significantly poorer performance compared to the younger adults only under the high noise condition at -5 dB SNR. For older group, performance on Seoul Verbal Learning Test(immediate recall) was significantly correlated with speech perception performance, upon controlling for hearing thresholds. In older adults, working memory and verbal short-term memory are the best predictors of speech-in-noise perception. The current study suggests that consideration of cognitive function for older adults in speech perception assessment is necessary due to its adverse effect on speech perception under background noise.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.111-128
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• 2004

In English, a focused word with new information receives a pitch accent. This paper examines how English native speakers and Korean speakers produce and perceive focus in English yes-no questions. The production experiments show that native speakers realize an appropriate intonation of yes-no questions, in which a focused word has a low pitch accent followed by a high phrasal accent and a high boundary tone. However, Korean speakers usually give a high tone to a focused word. In a like manner, the perception experiments show that English native speakers judge a word with a low tone to be focused, while Korean speakers have difficulty in comprehending a focused word realized as a low tone. And it is found that Korean speakers tend to perceive low tones on sentence initial and final focused words better than those on sentence medial focused words, and they often perceive a word with a relatively high fundamental frequency or a sharp rise of fundamental frequency as a focused word. This paper shows that Korean speakers have trouble to produce and perceive an appropriate tonal pattern of a focused yes-no question, and that can cause confusion in a conversation with native speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

A wh-phrase positioned in an embedded clause can be interpreted as having a matrix scope if the sentence is produced with proper prosodic structures such as the wh-intonation. In a previous experiment, a sentence with a wh-phrase in an embedded clause was given to 40 speakers of Gyeongsang Korean. A script containing the sentence was provided to induce a matrix scope interpretation for the wh-phrase. These 40 utterances were prepared as stimuli for a perception test to verify whether the wh-phrases in the stimuli were perceived as having matrix scopes. Each utterance was played thrice to 24 subjects. The results showed that more than half of the 72 responses indicated a preference for an embedded scope rather than a matrix scope in 20 of the utterances. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that the matrix scope responses were best predicted by the magnitude of the pitch prominence in a prosodic word consisting of an embedded verb and a complementizer. The pitch prominence was calculated by subtracting the fundamental frequency (F0) at the right edge of the prosodic word from the peak F0 in the same prosodic word. The smaller the magnitude, the more matrix responses there were. These results suggest that the categorical perception of wh-scopes is based on the magnitude of pitch prominence.