Speech perception adjusts to stable spectrotemporal properties of the listening environment.
When perceiving speech, listeners compensate for reverberation and stable spectral peaks in the speech signal. Despite natural listening conditions usually adding both reverberation and spectral coloration, these processes have only been studied separately. Reverberation smears spectral peaks across time, which is predicted to increase listeners' compensation for these peaks. This prediction was tested using sentences presented with or without a simulated reverberant sound field. All sentences had a stable spectral peak (added by amplifying frequencies matching the second formant frequency [F2] in the target vowel) before a test vowel varying from /i/ to /u/ in F2and spectral envelope (tilt). In Experiment 1, listeners demonstrated increased compensation (larger decrease in F2weights and larger increase in spectral tilt weights for identifying the target vowel) in reverberant speech than in nonreverberant speech. In Experiment 2, increased compensation was shown not to be due to reverberation tails. In Experiment 3, adding a pure tone to nonreverberant speech at the target vowel's F2frequency increased compensation, revealing that these effects are not specific to reverberation. Results suggest that perceptual adjustment to stable spectral peaks in the listening environment is not affected by their source or cause.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA. Electronic address: christian.stilp@louisville.edu.
Christian E
CE
Stilp
Department of Psychology, Murray State University, Murray, KY, 42071, USA. Electronic address: panderson9@murraystate.edu.
Paul W
PW
Anderson
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA. Electronic address: ashley.assgari@louisville.edu.
Ashley A
AA
Assgari
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA. Electronic address: g.ellis@louisville.edu.
Gregory M
GM
Ellis
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA. Electronic address: pavel.zahorik@louisville.edu.
Pavel
P
Zahorik
D001307:Auditory Perception; D002138:Calibration; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D009622:Noise; D010700:Phonetics; D011594:Psychometrics; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors
Perceptual constancy; Reverberation; Spectral calibration; Speech perception