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| Research article summary (published 30 Dec 2002): |
The synergy between speech production and perception.
Full Abstract
Speech intelligibility is known to be relatively unaffected by certain deformations of the acoustic spectrum. These include translations, stretching or contracting dilations, and shearing of the spectrum (represented along the logarithmic frequency axis). It is argued here that such robustness reflects a synergy between vocal production and auditory perception. Thus, on the one hand, it is shown that these spectral distortions are produced by common and unavoidable variations among different speakers pertaining to the length, cross-sectional profile, and losses of their vocal tracts. On the other hand, it is argued that these spectral changes leave the auditory cortical representation of the spectrum largely unchanged except for translations along one of its representational axes. These assertions are supported by analyses of production and perception models. On the production side, a simplified sinusoidal model of the vocal tract is developed which analytically relates a few "articulatory" parameters, such as the extent and location of the vocal tract constriction, to the spectral peaks of the acoustic spectra synthesized from it. The model is evaluated by comparing the identification of synthesized sustained vowels to labeled natural vowels extracted from the TIMIT corpus. On the perception side a "multiscale" model of sound processing is utilized to elucidate the effects of the deformations on the representation of the acoustic spectrum in the primary auditory cortex. Finally, the implications of these results for the perception of generally identifiable classes of sound sources beyond the specific case of speech and the vocal tract are discussed.
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Author information
Author/s: Ru, Powen (P); Chi, Taishih (T); Shamma, Shihab (S);
Affiliation: Center for Auditory and Acoustics Research, Institute for Systems Research, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article
Journal: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (J Acoust Soc Am), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2003-Jan; vol 113 (issue 1) : pp 498-515
Dates: Created 2003/01/31; Completed 2003/03/31; Revised 2006/12/27;
PMID: 12558287, 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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