title: Production and perception of French vowels by congenitally blind adults and sighted adults.
abstract: The goal of this study is to investigate the production and perception of French vowels by blind and sighted speakers. 12 blind adults and 12 sighted adults served as subjects. The auditory-perceptual abilities of each subject were evaluated by discrimination tests (AXB). At the production level, ten repetitions of the ten French oral vowels were recorded. Formant values and fundamental frequency values were extracted from the acoustic signal. Measures of contrasts between vowel categories were computed and compared for each feature (height, place of articulation, roundedness) and group (blind, sighted). The results reveal a significant effect of group (blind vs sighted) on production, with sighted speakers producing vowels that are spaced further apart in the vowel space than those of blind speakers. A group effect emerged for a subset of the perceptual contrasts examined, with blind speakers having higher peak discrimination scores than sighted speakers. Results suggest an important role of visual input in determining speech goals.
authors.affiliation: Departement de Linguistique et de Didactique des Langues, Laboratoire de Phonetique, Center for Research on Language, Mind, and Brain, Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. menard.lucie@uqam.ca
authors.forename: Lucie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ménard
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dupont
authors.forename: Shari R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Baum
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Aubin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001766:Blindness; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult