Fundamental frequency effects on thresholds for vowel formant discrimination

The present experiments examined the effect of fundamental frequency (F0) on thresholds for the discrimination of formant frequency for male vowels. Thresholds for formant-frequency discrimination were obtained for six vowels with two fundamental frequencies: normal F0 (126 Hz) and low F0 (101 Hz). Four well-trained subjects performed an adaptive tracking task under low stimulus uncertainty. Comparisons between the normal-F0 and the low-F0 conditions showed that formants were resolved more accurately for low F0. These thresholds for male vowels were compared to thresholds for female vowels previously reported by Kewley-Port and Watson [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 95, 485-496 (1994)]. Analyses of the F0 sets demonstrated that formant thresholds were significantly degraded for increases both in formant frequency and in F0. A piece-wise linear function was fit to each of the three sets of delta F thresholds as a function of formant frequency. The shape of the three parallel functions was similar such that delta F was constant in the F1 region and increased with formant frequency in the F2 region. The capability for humans to discriminate formant frequency may therefore be described as uniform in the F1 region (< 800 Hz) when represented as delta F and also uniform in the F2 region when represented as a ratio of delta F/F. A model of formant discrimination is proposed in which the effects of formant frequency are represented by the shape of an underlying piece-wise linear function. Increases in F0 significantly degrade overall discrimination independently from formant frequency.