Property detectors for bursts and transitions in speech perception

Blumstein, Sheila E.; Stevens, Kenneth N.; Nigro, Georgia

doi:10.1121/1.381433

Cited by 49 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…With most /da/ sounds, there is an F2 formant onset, followed by its transition. Contrary to the conclusions of Cooper et al (1952); Cole and Scott (1974a); Dorman et al (1977) and Blumstein et al (1977), this F2 onset can cause a forward masking effect on the formant transition, and thus, in that case, the F2 would play no role in perception. If a burst of energy is present immediately before the formant onset (around 2 [kHz], before vowel onset), the entire formant transition may be forward masked, and the onset plays no role in perception.…”

Section: /Da/contrasting

confidence: 41%

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Perceptual effects of plosive feature modification

Kapoor

Allen

2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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In the 1970-1980's, a number of papers explored the role of the transitional and burst features in consonant-vowel context. These papers left unresolved the relative importance of these two acoustic cues. This research takes advantage of refined signal processing methods, allowing for the visualization and modification of acoustic details. This experiment explores the impact of modifying the strength of the acoustic burst feature on the recognition scores P c (SNR) (function of the signal-to-noise ratio), for four plosive sounds /ta, ka, da, ga/. These results show high correlations between the relative burst intensity and the scores P c (SNR). Based on this correlation, one must conclude that these bursts are the primary acoustic cues used for the identification of these four consonants. This is in contrast to previous experiments, which used less precise methods to manipulate speech, and observe complex relationships between the scores, bursts and transition cues. In cases where the burst feature is removed entirely, it is shown that naturally existing conflicting acoustic features dominate the score. These observations seem directly inconsistent with transition cues playing a role: if the transition cues were important, they would dominate over low-level conflicting burst cues. These limited results arguably rule out the concept of redundant cues.

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Section: /Da/contrasting

confidence: 41%

“…The same year, Blumstein et al (1977) published a related /b,d,g/ study, using synthetic speech, that also presented a look at the burst and a host of transition cues. They explored the possibility that the cues were integrated (acted as a whole).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual effects of plosive feature modification

Kapoor

Allen

2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…The evidence seems to indicate that the position can have a greater adaptation effect than partial cue adapters (Blumstein et al, 1977). Therefore, if the same detectors process initial and final place of articulation cues in a vev context, then the full cue adapters may have a greater effect than the partial cue adapters.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous work has shown that bursts are processed at the level affected by selective adaptation (Blumstein, Stevens, & Nigro, 1977;Diehl, 1975). IiiExperiment 1, synthetic CV and VC series were constructed in which place of articulation was cued by the burst as well as the second-and third-formant transitions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Perceptual invariance for stop consonants in different positions

Wolf

1978

Perception & Psychophysics

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The basis for the invariant perception of place of articulation in pre' and postvocalic stops was investigated using the selective adaptation paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 considered the role of identical bursts, mirror-image formant transitions, and similar onset and offset spectra in the invariant perception of place of articulation in CV and VC stimuli, and Experiment 3 considered the importance of the second two cues in a VCV context. The results of these experiments suggest that, at the level of processing tapped by selective adaptation, neither identical bursts, mirror-image formant transitions, nor similar onset and offset spectra are the basis for the invariant perception of place of articulation in initial and final position. The vowel portion of an adapter was found to affect perception of the consonant portion of a stimulus, and the direction of this effect was predictable from the acoustic characteristics of the consonant and vowel. The implications of these findings for the nature of selective adaptation are discussed.One of the most interesting questions for the study of speech perception is the question of how listeners perceive the same phonetic segment in different contexts when the acoustic correlates of the segments are not the same. This question is particularly relevant to the perception of the place of articulation of stop consonants, since the acoustic cues to place of articulation appear to vary with the vowel context and syllabic position (Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler, & Studdert-Kennedy, 1967).1It is well accepted that the transitions of the second (F2) and third (F3) formants are important cues to place of articulation of stop consonants (Delattre, Liberman, & Cooper, 1955; Liberman et aI., 1967). However, the formant transitions for a particular consonant vary with the adjacent vowel and with the position of the consonant relative to the vowel. Consider, for instance, the often-cited example that the second-formant transition necessary for the perception of [d) in a two-formant synthetic [di] differs in direction and frequency range from the secondformant transition necessary for [d) in [du] (Liberman, et al., 1967). When the variable syllable position is considered, one finds that the directions of the formant transitions (i.e., rising or falling in frequency over time) for a particular place of articulation are opposite in pre-and postvocalic stops.

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“…Other attempts to dissociate acoustics from phonetics (e.g., Blumstein, Stevens, & Nigro, 1977 Blumstein et al con-cluded that the adaptation effect was "based upon the acoustic information in the signal rather than the phonetic label given the stimulus by the subject" (p. 1310). However, the remaining three subjects identified this same conflicting cue adaptor as [da], suggesting that the acoustic/phonetic dissociation in this instance was not perfect.…”

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confidence: 99%

Audiovisual presentation demonstrates that selective adaptation in speech perception is purely auditory

Roberts

Summerfield

1981

Perception & Psychophysics

129

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. Both auditory and phonetic processes have been implicated by previous results from selective adaptation experiments using speech stimuli. It has proved difficult to dissociate their individual contributions because the auditory and phonetic structure of conventional acoustical stimuli are mutually predictive. In the present experiment, the necessary dissociation was achieved by using an audiovisualadaptor consisting of an acoustical [bE] synchronized to a video recording of a talker uttering the syllable [gEl. This stimulus was generallyidentifiedas oneof the dentals [dE] or [a E]. It producedan adaptation effect,measuredwith an acoustical[be-ds] test continuum, identical in size and direction to that produced by an acoustical [bEl-an adaptor sharing its acoustical structure-and opposite in direction to that produced by an acoustical [dEl-an adaptor sharing its perceived phonetic identity. Thus, the result strongly suggests that auditory rather than phonetic levels of processing are influenced in selective adaptation.Since the introduction of the selective adaptation paradigm to research on speech perception (Eimas & Corbit, 1973), many questions have been raised concerning the nature and loci of the processes underlying the effects obtained. The paradigm is straightforward. A series of speech sounds varying in some distinctive acoustic parameter is created, usually spanning two phonetic categories. These test syllables are randomized and presented for identification under two conditions. In the baseline condition, the individual syllables are presented for identification in isolation. In the adaptation condition, each test syllable is presented following a number of repetitions of an adapting syllable. In each condition, an ogive is fitted to the identification functions from several presentations of each syllable in a series. The point of response equiprobability, the phoneme boundary, is determined. The position of the boundary in the series usually changes following adaptation, and the size of the change provides a measure of the adaptation effect. When the adaptor is an unambiguous syllablecorrespondingto one or the other of the endpoints of the test continuum, the boundary usually moves toward that syllable. If, for instance, the test series embraces a phonetic contrast in voicing (e.g., [ba-pha]), following adaptation with [ba] a greater proportion of test syllables, particularly in the boundary region, are identified as [phal, and the phoneme boundary shifts toward the [ba] end of the series.Originally, it was proposed (Cooper, 1974;

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Property detectors for bursts and transitions in speech perception

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Perceptual effects of plosive feature modification

Perceptual effects of plosive feature modification

Perceptual invariance for stop consonants in different positions

Audiovisual presentation demonstrates that selective adaptation in speech perception is purely auditory

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