Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Perception of critical-band adjusted vowel continua by sensorineural hearing-impaired listeners. |
| Authors: |
Espinoza-Varas, B., Jamieson, D., Wahn, Judy |
| Source: |
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America; 1984, Vol. 76 Issue S1, pS80-S81, 2p |
| Abstract: |
In front-back vowel continua cued by variations of F2, a critical-band (Z) representation of formant frequency was found to relate linearly to the judged 'phonetic goodness' of the vowels: changes in F2 (ΔF2) which are equal along the Z scale, produce nearly equal changes of judged 'phonetic-goodness' (ΔG) [Espinoza-Varas, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 74, S66 (1983)]. We replicated the previous experiments in sensorineural impaired listeners (low-frequency hearing loss, gradually sloping audiograms), who typically exhibit broadened critical bands. The vowel continua ranged from /u/ to /i/, /[open_oh]/ to /&eh;/, or /a/ to /æ/. On each continua the frequencies of F1 and F3 were fixed, and the frequency of F2 varied from the value appropriate for the back vowel to that appropriate for the front vowel in 6-12 steps of 0.5 Z each. F0 was 120 Hz. The 400-ms, steady-state vowels were generated by parallel synthesis; listeners categorized the stimuli and rated their 'phonetic goodness.' A highly consistent deficit (across subjects and vowel pairs) in the impaired listeners' performance is the poorer ability to assess how good an examplar of a vowel class a given stimulus is. The relation between ΔF 2 and ΔG is no longer linear. This deficit is observed even though the ability to identify the vowels may be 'normal.' The results appear to corroborate the possibility of a close relation between the judgment of 'phonetic goodness' of vowels and the critical-band level of frequency analysis [Supported by AHFMR and NSERC.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
|
Copyright of Journal of the Acoustical Society of America is the property of American Institute of Physics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.) |
| Database: |
Complementary Index |
