The role of contrasting temporal amplitude patterns in the perception of speech.

Full Abstract

Despite a lack of traditional speech features, novel sentences restricted to a narrow spectral slit can retain nearly perfect intelligibility [R. M. Warren et al., Percept. Psychophys. 57, 175-182 (1995)]. The current study employed 514 listeners to elucidate the cues allowing this high intelligibility, and to examine generally the use of narrow-band temporal speech patterns. When 1/3-octave sentences were processed to preserve the overall temporal pattern of amplitude fluctuation, but eliminate contrasting amplitude patterns within the band, sentence intelligibility dropped from values near 100% to values near zero (experiment 1). However, when a 1/3-octave speech band was partitioned to create a contrasting pair of independently amplitude-modulated 1/6-octave patterns, some intelligibility was restored (experiment 2). An additional experiment (3) showed that temporal patterns can also be integrated across wide frequency separations, or across the two ears. Despite the linguistic content of single temporal patterns, open-set intelligibility does not occur. Instead, a contrast between at least two temporal patterns is required for the comprehension of novel sentences and their component words. These contrasting patterns can reside together within a narrow range of frequencies, or they can be integrated across frequencies or ears. This view of speech perception, in which across-frequency changes in energy are seen as systematic changes in the temporal fluctuation patterns at two or more fixed loci, is more in line with the physiological encoding of complex signals.

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Author information

Author/s: Healy, Eric W (EW); Warren, Richard M (RM);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201, USA. ewh@sc.edu

Grants: DC00208 (Agency:United States NIDCD) ; DC01376 (Agency:United States NIDCD) ; DC05795 (Agency:United States NIDCD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (J Acoust Soc Am), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Mar; vol 113 (issue 3) : pp 1676-88

Dates: Created 2003/03/26; Completed 2003/05/29; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12656400, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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