SMAC lab member, Taijing Chen, presents a poster on the topic of auditory feedback at UW-Madison’s Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Unreliable auditory feedback leads to decreased sensitivity to auditory errors
Taijing Chen, Ben Parrell
When we speak, we use our prior expectations and sensory feedback to speak more accurately. To determine how the reliability of auditory feedback affects speech, we ran a two-session experiment with two phases in each. In the first phase of both sessions, participants were exposed to either unperturbed auditory feedback or to small, unpredictable (noisy) perturbations. Compensatory responses to large perturbations were measured in the second phase. We could thus reduce the feedback reliability and test whether this reduction leads to changes in sensitivity to auditory errors. Results indicate that exposure to noisy feedback leads to a decreased compensatory response, indicative of reduced auditory feedback reliance. These results help clarify the role of feedback in speech motor control and, potentially, mechanisms behind certain speech disorders.
For more information regarding the Undergraduate Research Symposium, look here.