Exam 12: Perceiving Speech and Music

When a new song is released by Taylor Swift, it is almost immediately embraced by her fans. It is new, yet it sounds very familiar. What role does the listener's musical knowledge and experience play in making something new sound familiar?

According to musical notes and the range of pitches of musical instruments, A4 has a fundamental frequency of 220 Hz, and A5 has a fundamental frequency of _____ Hz.

The International Phonetic Alphabet:

Arrange the phonemes below in pairs such that each pair is produced via the same manner of articulation. State which of each pair is voiced and which is voiceless. /b/ (as in bad), /v/ (as in voice), /t/ (as in tea), /f/ (as in find), /d/ (as in did), /p/ (as in pet).

_____ refers to the manner in which loudness varies as a piece of music progresses.

A neurologist is presented with two patients; the first patient is having difficulty producing speech, and the second patient is having difficulty understanding speech. When the neurologist inspects the MRIs of each patient's brain, where is one MOST likely to find lesions?

Julia met with a road accident. After the accident, she was able to understand what other people spoke. However, she was able to produce only a few words of speech. The accident has MOST likely destroyed her _____ frontal cortex.

Wanda is practicing the happy birthday song on a piano. Some of the notes are too high for her, so she starts singing in a lower note. This scenario MOST likely illustrates:

The fundamental frequency of vocal fold vibration for children is _____ Hz.

The French physician Pierre Paul Broca described two patients with damage to a region in the:

Differentiate between categorical and continuous perception.

Compositions based on minor scales are said to sound _____ than compositions based on major scales.

Can a computer be taught to perceive language by programming it to know the phonemes that comprise all words?

Betsy was listening to the radio. She did not realize that a phoneme in the announcer's speech had been replaced by a coughing sound. The fact that she seemed to perceive the missing speech sounds illustrates:

In this figure illustrating the harmonic spectrum of sound waves emerging from the mouth, the individual peaks in the spectrum labeled as F₁, F₂, and F₃ refer to:

_____ refers to the perception of different sensory stimuli as identical, up to a point at which further variation in the stimulus leads to a sharp change in the perception.

Network television programs are prohibited from broadcasting profanity. However, a network such as Comedy Central might want to censor a word and still allow viewers to hear the word. This is done by playing the first phoneme of the word and masking the remaining phoneme(s) of the word. Which phenomenon would BEST allow the word to be perceived through the mask, a coughing sound or silence? Explain your answer. Would the same mask work for all words?

What is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)? Why is it used in the representation of phonemes?

The term _____ refers to the quality exhibited by a combination of two or more notes from a scale that sounds unpleasant, or "off."

The _____ is a part of the vocal tract that contains the vocal folds and is also known as the voice box.