Influence of F pattern on the perception of duration
Ilse Lehiste · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1975
Thirty listeners were presented with pairs of stimuli of equal duration, but differing in F0, and were asked to decide which of the two stimuli was longer. The stimuli consisted of the vowel /a/ synthesized on a Rockland synthesizer. There were three durations: 270, 300, and 330 msec. In one set, one of the members of the pair had a monotone F0 at 120 Hz; the other member had a rising-falling F0 curve whose peak ranged in 12 semitone steps from 127 to 240 Hz. In the other set, the monotone frequency was 240 Hz; the changing member of the pair had a falling-rising F0 curve whose lowest value ranged from 227 to 120 Hz. Level patterns at 120 Hz were also included at each duration. In the case of level patterns, 68.7% of the listeners judged the first member of the pair to be longer. When the pitch inflection was on the first member of the pair, 71.1% of the listeners judged it to be longer. When the second member of the pair had changing pitch, the listeners' judgment that the second member was longer rose from 31.3% for the level pattern to 60.5%.