title: Difference limens for formant patterns of vowel sounds.
abstract: Studies of thresholds for discrimination of formant frequency variation in synthetic vowel sounds have been predominantly limited to variations in a single formant. Here, differences limens (DLs) are presented for multiformant variations expressed in measures of delta F and as distances in the auditory-perceptual space (APS) proposed by J. D. Miller [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 2114-2134 (1989)]. DLs for four subjects were estimated along 102 synthetic vowel continua representing five patterns of formant variation [(1) single variation in F1; (2) single variation in F2; (3) parallel simultaneous variation in F1 and F2; (4) opposing simultaneous variation in F1 and F2; and parallel simultaneous variation in F1, F2, and F3] and 17 within- or between-category vowel sounds. Minimal uncertainty methodology was employed utilizing an adaptive up-down procedure with a cued, two-interval forced-choice (2IFC) task. The results of this experiment reflect smaller DLs for both single- and multiple-formant changes than have been found in the past and also suggest that discrimination of parallel multiformant variation is significantly better than opposing multiformant or single-formant variation.
authors.affiliation: School of Speech Pathology & Audiology, Kent State University, Ohio 44242.
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Hawks
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003201:Computers; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception