Flexible and adaptive processes in speech perception

Abstract

The perception of speech can be flexible, influenced by multiple sources of information, and plastic, tuned over time to cumulative experience. This chapter provides examples of cognitive neuroscience research, presented at a workshop on speech and lexical processing. Section I demonstrates effects of different sources of semantic information on perception and brain activity. Section II presents evidence for the role of internally generated linguistic predictions in guiding adaptive plasticity, and for the potential involvement of a cerebellar-mediated supervised learning mechanism. Finally, Section III examines the relationship between flexibility and adaptive plasticity and underscores the need for considering their underlying neurobiological mechanisms and their interactions with cognitive processes, and other factors that contribute to generalization in order to further elucidate this relationship.