Exposure to auditory feedback delay while speaking induces perceptual habituation but does not mitigate the disruptive effect of delay on speech auditory-motor learning

ABSTRACT Perceiving the sensory consequences of our actions with a delay alters the interpretation of these afferent signals and impacts motor learning. For reaching movements, delayed visual feedback of hand position reduces the rate and extent of visuomotor adaptation, but substantial adaptation still occurs. Moreover, the detrimental effect of visual feedback delay on reach motor learning—selectively affecting its implicit component—can be mitigated by prior habituation to the delay. Auditory-motor learning for speech has been reported to be more sensitive to feedback delay, and it remains unknown whether habituation to auditory delay reduces its negative impact on learning. We investigated whether 30 minutes of exposure to auditory delay during speaking (a) affects the subjective perception of delay, and (b) mitigates its disruptive effect on speech auditory-motor learning. During a speech adaptation task with real-time perturbation of vowel spectral properties, participants heard this frequency-shifted feedback with no delay, 75 ms delay, or 115 ms delay. In the delay groups, 50% of participants had been exposed to the delay throughout a preceding 30-minute block of speaking whereas the remaining participants completed this block without delay. Although habituation minimized awareness of the delay, no improvement in adaptation to the spectral perturbation was observed. Thus, short-term habituation to auditory feedback delays is not effective in reducing the negative impact of delay on speech auditory-motor adaptation. Combined with previous findings, the strong negative effect of delay and the absence of an influence of delay awareness suggest the involvement of predominantly implicit learning mechanisms in speech. HIGHLIGHTS Speech auditory-motor adaptation to a spectral perturbation was reduced by ~50% when feedback was delayed by 75 or 115 ms. Thirty minutes of prior delay exposure without perturbation effectively reduced participants’ awareness of the delay. However, habituation was ineffective in remediating the detrimental effect of delay on speech auditory-motor adaptation. The dissociation of delay awareness and adaptation suggests that speech auditory-motor learning is mostly implicit.

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