Spoken Word Boundary Detection Task

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A Spoken Word Boundary Detection Task is a Speech Segmentation Task that is a Word Boundary Detection Task which requires the identification of the start and end of Natural Language Words in a Spoken Expression.

References

2001

  • Elizabeth K. Johnson and Peter W. Jusczykf. (2001). “Word Segmentation by 8-Month-Olds: When Speech Cues Count More Than Statistics.In: Journal of Memory and Language, 44(4).
    • Author Keywords: coarticulation; word segmentation; stress cues; statistical cues; prosodic stress; transitional probabilities; statistical learning.
    • ABSTRACT: Fluent speech contains few pauses between adjacent words. Cues such as stress, phonotactic constraints, and the statistical structure of the input aid infants in discovering word boundaries. None of the many available segmentation cues is foolproof. So, we used the headturn preference procedure to investigate infants' integration of multiple cues. We also explored whether infants find speech cues produced by coarticulation useful in word segmentation. Using natural speech syllables, we replicated Saffran, Aslin, et al.'s (1996) study demonstrating that 8-month-olds can segment a continuous stream of speech based on statistical cues alone. Next, we added conflicting segmentation cues. Experiment 2 pitted stress against statistics, whereas Experiment 3 pitted coarticulation against statistics. In both cases, 8-month-olds weighed speech cues more heavily than statistical cues. This observation was verified in Experiment 4, which indicated that greater complexity of the familiarization sequence does not necessarily lead to familiarity effects.
  • (Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001) ⇒ Sven L. Mattys, and Peter W. Jusczyk. (2001). “Do Infants Segment Words or Recurring Contiguous Patterns?" In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(3).
    • ABSTRACT: Eight experiments tested the hypothesis that infants' word segmentation abilities are reducible to familiar sound-pattern parsing regardless of actual word boundaries. This hypothesis was disconfirmed in experiments using the headturn preference procedure: 8.5-month-olds did not mis-segment a consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC) word (e.g., dice) from passages containing the corresponding phonemic pattern across a word boundary (C#VC#; “cold ice”), but they segmented it when the word was really present (“roll dice”). However, they did not segment the real vowel–consonant (VC) word (ice in “cold ice”) until 16 months. Yet, at that age, they still did not false alarm on the straddling CVC word. Thus, infants do not simply respond to recurring phonemic patterns. Instead, they are sensitive to both acoustic and allophonic cues to word boundaries. Moreover, there is a sizable developmental gap between consonant- and vowel-initial word segmentation.

1999

  • (Jusczyk, 1999) ⇒ Peter W. Jusczyk. (1999). “How infants begin to extract words from speech.” In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(9).
    • ABSTRACT: A crucial step for acquiring a native language vocabulary is the ability to segment words from fluent speech. English-learning infants first display some ability to segment words at about 7.5 months of age. However, their initial attempts at segmenting words only approximate those of fluent speakers of the language. In particular, 7.5-month-old infants are able to segment words that conform to the predominant stress pattern of English words. The ability to segment words with other stress patterns appears to require the use of other sources of information about word boundaries. By 10.5 months, English learners display sensitivity to additional cues to word boundaries such as statistical regularities, allophonic cues and phonotactic patterns. Infants’ word segmentation abilities undergo further development during their second year when they begin to link sound patterns with particular meanings. By 24 months, the speed and accuracy with which infants recognize words in fluent speech is similar to that of native adult listeners. This review describes how infants use multiple sources of information to locate word boundaries in fluent speech, thereby laying the foundations for language understanding.

1996

  • (Saffran et al., 1996) ⇒ Jenny R. Saffran, Elissa L. Newport, and Richard N. Aslin. (1996). “Word Segmentation: The Role of Distributional Cues.” In: Journal of Memory and Language, 35(4).
    • ABSTRACT: One of the infant's first tasks in language acquisition is to discover the words embedded in a mostly continuous speech stream. This learning problem might be solved by using distributional cues to word boundaries — for example, by computing the transitional probabilities between sounds in the language input and using the relative strengths of these probabilities to hypothesize word boundaries. The learner might be further aided by language-specific prosodic cues correlated with word boundaries. As a first step in testing these hypotheses, we briefly exposed adults to an artificial language in which the only cues available for word segmentation were the transitional probabilities between syllables. Subjects were able to learn the words of this language. Furthermore, the addition of certain prosodic cues served to enhance performance. These results suggest that distributional cues may play an important role in the initial word segmentation of language learners.
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