Abstract
Purpose: The contributions of voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) were evaluated for the perception of voicing in syllable-initial stop consonants in words that were low-pass filtered and/or masked by speech-shaped noise. It was expected that listeners would rely less on VOT and more on F0 in these degraded conditions. Method: Twenty young listeners with normal hearing identified modified natural speech tokens that varied by VOT and F0 in several conditions of low-pass filtering and masking noise. Stimuli included /b/-/p/ and /d/-/t/ continua that were presented in separate blocks. Identification results were modeled using mixed-effects logistic regression. Results: When speech was filtered and/or masked by noise, listeners' voicing perceptions were driven less by VOT and more by F0. Speech-shaped masking noise exerted greater effects on the /b/-/p/ contrast, while low-pass filtering exerted greater effects on the /d/-/t/ contrast, consistent with the acoustics of these contrasts. Conclusion: Listeners can adjust their use of acoustic-phonetic cues in a dynamic way that is appropriate for challenging listening conditions; cues that are less influential in ideal conditions can gain priority in challenging conditions.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1097-1107 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research |
Volume | 56 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2013 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Bandwidth
- Noise
- Speech perception
- Voicing contrast