Perceived Pitch of Whispered Vowels
Ian B. Thomas · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1969
Listeners were required to determine the pitch of the whispered vowels of a male and a female speaker. Continuous tape loops of the vowels were played to the listeners who were then asked to specify the perceived pitch by comparison with that of a pure-tone oscillator. Initially, the perceived pitch of each of the vowels corresponded very closely to F2 as measured from spectrograms. In subsequent tests in which the listeners were told to expect more than one pitch, two listeners identified additional pitches corresponding to F1 for the vowels /a/ and /ɔ/ of both speakers. The accuracy and consistency of formant determination using this simple “listen-and-compare” method compare favorably with results obtainable from more complex analysis procedures.