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Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

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Published on: September 27, 2024

Level-dependent changes in perception of speech envelope cues.

Judy R Dubno¹, Jayne B Ahlstrom, Xin Wang

¹Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, 135 Rutledge Avenue, MSC 550, Charleston, SC 29425-5500, USA. dubnojr@musc.edu

Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO

|August 9, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Speech recognition performance, particularly for temporal envelope cues, is influenced by loudness. Optimal speech perception occurs at mid-loudness levels, with performance declining at both lower and higher levels due to cochlear nonlinearities.

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Area of Science:

Auditory Neuroscience
Speech Perception
Psychoacoustics

Background:

Basilar-membrane nonlinearities affect how the ear processes sound.
Speech envelope fluctuations are crucial for understanding speech.
Loudness can alter the perception of these fluctuations.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how speech level affects temporal envelope fluctuations.
To examine the impact of these changes on speech recognition in normal-hearing adults.
To link observed patterns to cochlear nonlinearities.

Main Methods:

Speech recognition (consonants, keywords) was tested across various sound levels (45-85 dB SPL).
Spectrally degraded speech (noise vocoder) was used to emphasize envelope cues.
Constant audibility was maintained using broadband noise at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio.

Main Results:

Speech recognition scores and envelope-dependent feature transmission increased from 45 to 60 dB SPL.
Scores and feature transmission decreased from 60 to 85 dB SPL.
A quadratic pattern was observed, with peak performance at mid-levels.

Conclusions:

Cochlear nonlinearities play a significant role in processing speech envelope cues.
Speech recognition is maximized at mid-loudness levels, not low or high.
These findings support a model where basilar-membrane compression influences speech perception.