Engine theory

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The motor theory of speech perception ( motor theory of speech perception ) is a theory of perception of language that was developed in the 1960s in the Haskins Laboratories (see. Liberman et al. (1967)).

overview

There are several models of speech perception; the motor theory is one of the oldest. Their basic assumption is that humans decipher perceived acoustic signals depending on articulatory patterns that are stored in the brain. This means that there is an idea in the brain of which sound belongs to which articulatory gesture (see below). The motor theory came up because Liberman's team discovered that acoustic perceptions caused by speech sounds are not particularly strongly linked to auditory characteristics (see categorical perception ).

In the 1980s, the engine theory was modified a little to e.g. B. To be able to explain context effects in speech perception.

According to motor theory, there is a module in the human brain that picks up all auditory stimuli that appear linguistically relevant before normal auditory processing takes place. This module uses some sort of internal synthesizer to determine which articulatory gesture is most likely responsible for the speech input. This process is called analysis by synthesis ( analysis by synthesis ). Such a mechanism represents an explanation for context dependencies, trading relations and also for the influence of visually perceived language on language perception.

The motor theory is supported, among other things, by studies that show that there are significant differences between linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli.

criticism

The motor theory is invalidated by studies that show that certain phenomena are not only language-specific or are limited to human speech perception. In the course of time, especially in studies of categorical perception, evidence has repeatedly been found that the motor theory alone cannot explain all phenomena. In language acquisition, it has been shown that perceptual ability to discriminate precedes the articulatory ability. Another argument against the motor theory was that one can also understand "talking" parrots, although their production mechanism differs greatly from that of humans.

Articulatory gestures

These are the movements and events that we generate with our organs of articulation (e.g. tongue, lower jaw, lips, velum ) (see Articulatory Phonetics ).

literature

  • Liberman, AM, Cooper, FS, Shankweiler, DP, & M. Studdert-Kennedy. (1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychological Review, 74, 431-461.
  • Liberman, AM, & IG Mattingly. (1985). The motor theory of speech perception revised. Cognition, 21, 1-36.
  • H. Mitterer, A. Cutler: "Speech Perception" in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics , pp. 770-782, 2006, Science Direct
  • Bernd Pompino-Marschall: "Introduction to Phonetics", 2003, deGruyter
  • John Clark, Colin Yallop: "An introduction to phonetics and phonology", 1995, Blackwell