Effects of fundamental frequency contour on the identification of resynthesized vowels with static formant frequency patterns
James M. Hillenbrand, Robert T. Gayvert · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1988
At a previous meeting, a study that was aimed at determining the identifiability of vowels based exclusively on static spectral information was discussed [Hillenbrand and McMahon, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 82, S81 (1987)]. In that study, a formant synthesizer was used to generate steady-state versions of 1520 vowels (76 speakers × 10 vowels × 2 repetitions) using Peterson and Barney's measured values of F0 and F1−F3 [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 24, 175–184 (1952)]. The values of all control parameters remained constant throughout the 300-ms duration of each stimulus. Listeners in that study showed an error rate of approximately 25%, several times greater than the 5.6% error rate reported in the original Peterson and Barney study. The present study represents a follow-up designed to determine what role fundamental frequency movement might play in vowel identification. The new stimuli were identical to those of the previous resynthesis study except that all stimuli were generated with a falling pitch contour. Preliminary results suggest that the introduction of pitch movement decreases the error rate from approximately 25% to approximately 21%. [Work supported by Rome Air Development Center under contract F3060285-C-0008.]