Showing papers on "Viseme published in 1971"

Basic research in speech and lateralization of language: Some implications for reading disability

Abstract: Basic research in speech and the lateralization of language is shown to illuminate the problems of reading and some of its disabilities. First, it is pointed out how speech, or language for the ear, differs markedly from reading, or language for the eye. Though the sounds of speech are a very complex code and the optical shapes of written language are a simple cipher or alphabet on the phonemes, we all perceive speech easily but read only with difficulty. Perceiving speech is easy because, as members of the human race, we all have access to a special physiological apparatus that decodes the complex speech signal and recovers the segmentation of the linguistic message. Reading is hard because the phonemic segmentation, which is automatic and intuitive in the case of speech, must be made fully conscious and explicit. The syllabic method supplemented by phonics (used with certain reservations) is suggested for remediation of segmentation problems. Second, it is posited that since the sounds of speech are processed differently from non-speech sounds, the two should not be diagnosed and remediated interchangeably. Third, it is shown that the relationships among cerebral lateralization for language, handedness and poor reading can now be studied more meaningfully because of the recent development of new techniques. A truism often heard in the opening lecture of graduate classes in education is that we have few answers to the problems that beset us, only questions. In the field of reading, the difficulty may be owing at least in part to our impatient attempts to find immediate solutions for the teacher and the student in the classroom, and our consequent neglect of basic research. I should like to suggest today how knowledge of basic research in related disciplines may lead to clues for improving beginning reading instruction and the lot of the disabled reader—if only by affording us a deeper understanding of the reading process.

The Role of Speech Sounds in the Perception and Recognition of Words

Abstract: As regards the perception of noisy or distorted speech signals, it is commonly known that intelligibility is much higher for words than for meaningless sequences of phonemes Likewise, correct recognition of phrases or sentences is easier than the identification of words spoken in meaningless order It is obvious that a decision based on a larger unit is more reliable than consecutive decisions based on small units There is no doubt that this improvement of a listener’s perception is due to his knowledge of the language — his competence This paper deals with some features of language that may account for an increase of recognition performance