Rhythmic grouping effects on temporal order identification of vowel sequences
Peter J. Alfonso, John E. Kerivan · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1979
Near-perfect performance has been shown for identification of four synthetic vowel sequences /i, æ, a, u/ at 90–150-ms vowel durations. However, a significant permuted order effect was found for certain 30- and 60-ms vowel sequences by Kerivan, Alfonso, and Bornstein [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 65, S113(A) (1979)]. In a further experiment, we have investigated rhythmic grouping effects on the 30- and 60-ms vowel sequences which displayed the permuted order effect in the first experiment. Rhythmic grouping was created by (1) the introduction of a silent gap between two vowels in a sequence, or (2) varying the duration of a single vowel within a sequence. All possible permutations of the two rhythmic grouping conditions were created on the Haskins serial resonance synthesizer by modifying the original stimuli. The results of the experiment indicate that the permuted order effect can be significantly reduced in steady-state concatenated vowel sequences by controlling certain prosodic temporal features of the sequences. [Work supported by an NINCDS NIH grant awarded to Haskins Laboratories and the University of Connecticut Research Foundation.]