Schmitz, J. & Sebastián-Gallés, N.
Brain and Cognition Unit. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Barcelona, Spain.
Recent TMS studies have shown that speech perception can be influenced by activating the motor areas involved in articulating the same sound. In this experiment we test if blocking the articulation movements of the vowel /e/ by placing a spoon over the tongue can alter the perception of different /e/ sounds in a similar way. The vowel /e/ is a close-mid-front vowel, articulated by lifting the front part of the tongue to a middle height in the mouth. A spoon over the tongue influences this movement by pressing the front part of the tongue down. The results show that when participants have a spoon over the tongue, they accept /e/ variants with a higher tongue position in the back of the mouth more often compared to when they have no spoon in the mouth or a spoon at the side of the mouth. This indicates that participants take into account their current tongue position (front part of the tongue down and back part of the tongue relatively more up) when rating the different /e/ sounds they hear. This is in line with previous research showing a role of the motor cortex in speech perception in difficult tasks.