Compensation following real-time manipulation of formants in isolated vowels

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2006-04, Vol.119 (4), p.2288-2297
• Main Authors: Purcell, David W., Munhall, Kevin G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acoustic signal processing; Acoustics; Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Audition; Biological and medical sciences; Ear and associated structures. Auditory pathways and centers. Hearing. Vocal organ. Phonation. Sound production. Echolocation; Exact sciences and technology; Feedback; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Humans; Loudness Perception; Male; Perception; Phonetics; Physics; Pitch Discrimination; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reference Values; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Sound Spectrography; Speech Acoustics; Speech Perception; Speech Production Measurement; Verbal Behavior; Vertebrates: nervous system and sense organs
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.2173514

Auditory feedback influences human speech production, as demonstrated by studies using rapid pitch and loudness changes. Feedback has also been investigated using the gradual manipulation of formants in adaptation studies with whispered speech. In the work reported here, the first formant of steady-state isolated vowels was unexpectedly altered within trials for voiced speech. This was achieved using a real-time formant tracking and filtering system developed for this purpose. The first formant of vowel ∕ ε ∕ was manipulated 100% toward either /æ/ or / I /, and participants responded by altering their production with average F1 compensation as large as 16.3% and 10.6% of the applied formant shift, respectively. Compensation was estimated to begin < 460 ms after stimulus onset. The rapid formant compensations found here suggest that auditory feedback control is similar for both F0 and formants.