Pitch of whispered vowels
Elizabeth C. Oesterle, Lawrence L. Feth, Edward McN. Burns · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1980
Previous research in which listeners matched a pure tone to the perceived pitch of tape recorded whispered vowel stimuli has suggested that the perceived pitch corresponds closely with the second formant frequency [Thomas, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 46, 468–470 (1969); McGlone and Manning, Folia phoniat. 31, 9–14 (1979)]. We investigated the pitches of computer generated whispered vowels /i, u, a, Λ/. Five listeners were asked to match the pitch of an adjustable rippled noise stimulus to the perceived pitch of the whispered vowels. Rippled noise was selected as the matching stimulus because it is spectrally similar to whispered vowels, thus minimizing the well known problems involved in pitch matching pure tones to complex stimuli. Results indicate that the perceived pitch does not correspond with the second formant frequency. These findings will be discussed in light of current theories of pitch perception. [Work supported by NIH.]