title: Perceptual adaptation of voice gender discrimination with spectrally shifted vowels.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine whether perceptual adaptation improves voice gender discrimination of spectrally shifted vowels and, if so, which acoustic cues contribute to the improvement.
  
  
  METHODS
  Voice gender discrimination was measured for 10 normal-hearing subjects, during 5 days of adaptation to spectrally shifted vowels, produced by processing the speech of 5 male and 5 female talkers with 16-channel sine-wave vocoders. The subjects were randomly divided into 2 groups; one subjected to 50-Hz, and the other to 200-Hz, temporal envelope cutoff frequencies. No preview or feedback was provided.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There was significant adaptation in voice gender discrimination with the 200-Hz cutoff frequency, but significant improvement was observed only for 3 female talkers with F(0) > 180 Hz and 3 male talkers with F(0) < 170 Hz. There was no significant adaptation with the 50-Hz cutoff frequency.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Temporal envelope cues are important for voice gender discrimination under spectral shift conditions with perceptual adaptation, but spectral shift may limit the exclusive use of spectral information and/or the use of formant structure on voice gender discrimination. The results have implications for cochlear implant users and for understanding voice gender discrimination.
authors.affiliation: House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA. tianhaol@gmail.com
authors.forename: Tianhao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Qian-Jie
authors.initials: QJ
authors.lastname: Fu
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001307:Auditory Perception; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012016:Reference Values; D012737:Sex Factors; D014831:Voice; D055815:Young Adult