Auditory Feedback | Fengyue Lisa Zhao

Temporal and Articulatory Adjustments under Degraded Auditory Feedback in Mandarin Tone Production

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

This study investigated whether degraded auditory feedback results in temporal and articulatory adjustments in Mandarin tone production.

Method

Facial video and ultrasound tongue imaging were used to track articulatory movements. Five native Mandarin speakers produced syllables with different tones under normal and noise-masked feedback.

Results

Noise generally lengthened syllable duration, with the largest increase in Tone 3 and effects varying across syllable positions. Articulatory responses were less uniform: all speakers showed feedback condition differences, but the magnitude and direction of adjustment varied across articulators and speakers. Lip aperture showed the most consistent increase in movement, whereas tongue responses were more variable. Tone further conditioned the response, but tone-related articulatory changes were largely speaker-specific. These findings suggest that hyperarticulation involves complex articulatory adjustments shaped jointly by phonological structure and individual articulatory strategies, rather than a monolithic alteration of speech.

Tone–Segment Timing under Auditory Feedback Masking in L1 and Heritage Mandarin Speakers

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

Auditory feedback is central to speech motor control, but its role in the temporal coordination of tonal and segmental articulation remains unclear.

Method

This study examines tone–segment timing in 10 L1 and 5 heritage Mandarin speakers under normal and noise-masked auditory feedback.

Results

Bayesian distributional regression models showed that tone-onset-to-syllable-onset coordination was the most stable temporal relationship. Noise masking reduced temporal variability for L1 speakers, consistent with increased reliance on internal (or predictive) feedback control, but had little effect on heritage speakers. These findings provide evidence that auditory feedback contributes to the stability of tone–segment timing, and that the ability to rely on internal feedback when external feedback is degraded depends on language experience.

Unpredictable Temporal Feedback Perturbation Dissociates Mismatch Detection from Correction

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

^{- Fengyue Lisa Zhao & Sam Tilsen (2026). Unpredictable temporal feedback perturbation dissociates mismatch detection from correction. Journal of Phonetics, 118, 101519. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2026.101519}

This study investigates the online response of the speech motor control system to temporally perturbed auditory feedback using a novel Unpredictable Temporal Feedback Perturbation (UTFP) paradigm. Unlike Adaptive Temporal Feedback Perturbation (ATFP), in which predictable perturbations induce adaptation over repeated trials, UTFP applies brief temporal perturbations at random times on random trials to isolate the immediate, online response of the system.

Perturbations were applied within productions of the phrase “I saw papa yesterday,” where papa had either a strong–weak (PApa) or weak–strong (paPA) stress pattern. We examined effects of the perturbation on segmental duration and local relative speech rate in the target words PApa and paPA.

Our results show that, in contrast to ATFP responses, UTFP responses are delayed, manifesting as a transient slowing of speech approximately 300–600 ms after the perturbation. Moreover, the response effect is always lengthening, rather than being compensatory, as observed in ATFP. This suggests that the UTFP response is driven by a generic sensory mismatch detection mechanism, not a mismatch correction system. Similar to ATFP responses, we found that UTFP response magnitudes are modulated by phonological structure, being larger in vowels than consonants, in stressed than unstressed syllables, and in word-final than word-initial syllables. Substantial interspeaker variation in the timecourse of UTFP responses was correlated with speech rate, suggesting a relation between rate of speech and attention to sensory feedback.