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fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Neighboring spectral content influences vowel identification
L L Holt1, A J Lotto, K R Kluender
1Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA. lholt@andrew.cmu.edu
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|August 24, 2000
Summary
Contextual effects on vowel perception depend on spectral content, not just phonetic labeling. Acoustic properties of surrounding consonants significantly influence how listeners perceive vowels, impacting speech sound categorization.
Area of Science:
- Phonetics and Speech Science
- Auditory Perception
- Psychoacoustics
Background:
- Vowel perception is influenced by surrounding phonetic context.
- The relative importance of acoustic spectral information versus phonetic labeling in these effects is not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the roles of spectral content and phonetic labeling in context effects on vowel perception.
- To determine if acoustic properties of consonants, independent of their phonetic identity, affect vowel categorization.
Main Methods:
- Synthesized CVC syllables with varying acoustic and perceptual vowel features.
- Created nonspeech-speech hybrid stimuli using sine-wave glides and tones to model consonant spectral properties.
- Conducted forced-choice identification tasks with human listeners.
Main Results:
- Vowels were more frequently identified with a specific height ([delta]) in a [dVd] context compared to a [bVb] context.
- Nonspeech stimuli modeling the spectral characteristics of [dVd] context led to more [delta] identifications than those modeling [bVb].
- Voiceless consonants had a weaker influence on vowel perception than voiced consonants, aligning with spectral differences.
Conclusions:
- Spectral content of the speech context plays a significant role in modulating vowel perception.
- Acoustic cues, particularly spectral information, are crucial for understanding context effects in speech perception.
- These findings support a general perceptual account of context effects in speech processing.
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