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Course description:
Speech communication takes place under extreme conditions: for example, in the presence of
environmental distortions such as noise and reverberation, when parts of the message are
obliterated or masked by competing sounds, when the identity of the speaker is unknown or the
dialect of the talker is unfamiliar, and when the auditory input is impoverished or distorted
because of hearing loss. This course considers how human listeners achieve this by looking at
auditory, perceptual, cognitive and neural processes that intervene between the production of
speech and its recognition. Topics include: acoustic correlates of phonetic categories; auditory
processing of speech in background noise and the "cocktail party" problem; the problem of
lexical access; the development of speech perception in infancy; auditory analysis and neural
coding of speech; audio-visual speech perception; environmental constraints on speech
perception, and the effects of hearing loss.
Readings: The primary readings are journal articles and/or book chapters. Most will be
available online and will be assigned 1-2 weeks before they are covered in class. Assigned
readings must be completed prior to the class in which they are discussed.
Recommended texts:
• Kent, R.D. & Read, C. (2001). The Acoustic Analysis of Speech. (Singular).
• Stevens, K.N. (1999). Acoustic Phonetics (Current Studies in Linguistics). M.I.T. Press.
Course requirements:
• Class presentations (20%).
• Written report on class presentations (30%).
• Midterm exam (20%)
• Final takehome exam (30%)
Class presentation and report: Select two papers from the Readings section of the class web
page or from the speech perception literature (must be approved). Your job is to present a brief
summary of the paper to the class (15 minutes) and initiate/lead discussion of the paper.
Learning objectives
After completing the course, students should be able to:
(1) Demonstrate an understanding of basic speech acoustics and the perceptual and neural
mechanisms involved in the recognition of different classes of speech sounds;
(2) Demonstrate an understanding of how the acoustic structure of speech interacts with
auditory processing to create special problems for speech communication in hearing
impaired listeners;
(3) Apply this knowledge to analyze specific problems arising in the current literature on
speech perception.