Effects of Visual Feedback on the Production and Perception of Second Language Speech Sounds : A Comparison of Articulatory and Auditory Instruction
type: CreativeWork
description: A fundamental issue in speech science concerns the extent to which speech sounds are mentally represented by articulatory-motor and/or auditory-acoustic features. This dissertation aims to expand upon the current literature by investigating changes in production and perception following visual feedback training with either articulatory or acoustic speech targets. Eleven second language (L2) learners of English participated in a single session of pronunciation practice in which they produced either an English vowel (/æ/-/ɛ/) or consonant (/s/-/ʃ/) contrast while their speech movements and acoustics were recorded using an electromagnetic articulography system. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two training conditions (visual feedback or control) and one of two feedback conditions (articulatory or acoustic). Articulatory-based visual feedback was provided by a talker-controlled tongue-avatar, while acoustic-based visual feedback was provided by a real-time sound spectrograph. Changes in production for vowel contrasts were acoustically analyzed by measuring the Euclidean distance between the two vowels. A subset of vowel and consonant tokens were additionally judged by native English listeners in a forced-choice perceptual discrimination task. In general, the results showed that talkers who received visual feedback training moderately improved their production accuracy when compared to those exposed to the control condition, although this result did not reach significance. For vowel contrasts, acoustic and perceptual data demonstrated that articulatory-based visual feedback led to a similar magnitude of improvement as acoustic-based visual feedback. Of the two talkers who trained on consonant contrasts, the talker who practiced with articulatory-based visual feedback showed a greater increase in production accuracy than the talker who practiced with acoustic-based visual feedback. An analysis of the relationship between the changes in talkers’ L2 production …
abstract: A fundamental issue in speech science concerns the extent to which speech sounds are mentally represented by articulatory-motor and/or auditory-acoustic features. This dissertation aims to expand upon the current literature by investigating changes in production and perception following visual feedback training with either articulatory or acoustic speech targets. Eleven second language (L2) learners of English participated in a single session of pronunciation practice in which they produced either an English vowel (/æ/-/ɛ/) or consonant (/s/-/ʃ/) contrast while their speech movements and acoustics were recorded using an electromagnetic articulography system. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two training conditions (visual feedback or control) and one of two feedback conditions (articulatory or acoustic). Articulatory-based visual feedback was provided by a talker-controlled tongue-avatar, while acoustic-based visual feedback was provided by a real-time sound spectrograph. Changes in production for vowel contrasts were acoustically analyzed by measuring the Euclidean distance between the two vowels. A subset of vowel and consonant tokens were additionally judged by native English listeners in a forced-choice perceptual discrimination task. In general, the results showed that talkers who received visual feedback training moderately improved their production accuracy when compared to those exposed to the control condition, although this result did not reach significance. For vowel contrasts, acoustic and perceptual data demonstrated that articulatory-based visual feedback led to a similar magnitude of improvement as acoustic-based visual feedback. Of the two talkers who trained on consonant contrasts, the talker who practiced with articulatory-based visual feedback showed a greater increase in production accuracy than the talker who practiced with acoustic-based visual feedback. An analysis of the relationship between the changes in talkers’ L2 production …
author: Mehta, Sonya
language: en
keywords: English language -- Pronunciation by foreign speakers, Second language acquisition, Speech perception, Feedback (Psychology)
date published: 2020-09-10
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:19:37Z
provider: Texas Digital Library
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Texas Digital Library

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10735.1/9136