Spectral-shape discrimination of synthetic plosive bursts
C. L. Farrat, Charlotte M. Reed, N. I. Durlach, Louis D. Braida, Patrick M. Zurek · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1983
The objective of this research is to measure the discriminability of speech-like sounds on the basis of spectral shape alone and to relate these measurements to underlying auditory abilities by means of psychoacoustic experiments and quantitative models. Preliminary measurement using normal-hearing listeners have been obtained on: (a) the discriminability of two synthetic plosive bursts (corresponding to /p/ and /t/ bursts in the context C /a/) and (b) the discriminability of incremental changes in the spectral shape os each synthetic stimulus in various frequency regions. Loundness and duration cues were eliminated by roving intensities and equating durations, and the difficulty of the tasks was controlled by adding low-pass noise at various S/N ratios. The talk will include a description of the data and of initial attempts to develop a quantitative theoretical model of spectral shape discrimination. [Work supported by NIH.]