How is harmonicity used in grouping speech sounds?
Chris J. Darwin · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2003
This paper asks how a common property of voiced speech sounds harmonicity is used by the auditory system to improve the perception of speech in the presence of simultaneous competing sounds. We present data from three different experimental paradigms concerned, respectively, with the combination of sounds across different ears, different frequency regions, and different times. The first set of experiments qualify the conclusion that sounds from the same harmonic series fuse into a single object when presented to different ears. The second impose limits on the ability of harmonicity to combine information across different frequency regions. The third demonstrate the utility of continuity of pitch (compared with a vocal-tract size) in maintaining attention to a single sound source. Elucidating the mechanisms by which we segregate speech from background sounds requires proper consideration both of the structure of the speech signal and of the auditory system through which it passes.