Effects of auditory masking by white noise on variability of fundamental frequency during highly similar productions of spontaneous speech.
Six adults (3 men, 3 women) produced highly similar spontaneous speech utterances during quiet and 90-dB SPL white noise. Although subjects' fundamental frequency (fo) was significantly increased when speaking in noise, their fo variability (coefficients of variation) throughout the utterance was not affected by the auditory disruption. This indicated that their ability to vary fo for linguistic stressing was preserved under short-term disturbed auditory feedback. These findings further supported the hypothesis that fo is under open-loop regulation.
D000328:Adult; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010898:Pitch Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior