title: Perceptual-center modeling is affected by including acoustic rate-of-change modulations.
abstract: This study investigated the acoustic correlates of perceptual centers (p-centers) in CV and VC syllables and developed an acoustic p-center model. In Part 1, listeners located syllables' p-centers by a method-of-adjustment procedure. The CV syllables contained the consonants /s/,/r/,/n/,/t/,/d/,/k/, and /g/; the VCs, the consonants /s/,/r/, and /n/. The vowel in all syllables was /a/. The results of this experiment replicated and extended previous findings regarding the effects of phonetic variation on p-centers. In Part 2, a digital signal processing procedure was used to acoustically model p-center perception. Each stimulus was passed through a six-band digital filter, and the outputs were processed to derive low-frequency modulation components. These components were weighted according to a perceived modulation magnitude function and recombined to create six psychoacoustic envelopes containing modulation energies from 3 to 47 Hz. In this analysis, p-centers were found to be highly correlated with the time-weighted function of the rate-of-change in the psychoacoustic envelopes, multiplied by the psychoacoustic envelope magnitude increment. The results were interpreted as suggesting (1) the probable role of low-frequency energy modulations in p-center perception, and (2) the presence of perceptual processes that integrate multiple articulatory events into a single syllabic event.
authors.affiliation: University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. harsin@u.arizona.edu
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Harsin
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D011601:Psychophysics; D012016:Reference Values; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception