Effects of Spectral Envelope and Fundamental Frequency Shifts on the Perception of Foreign-Accented Speech.
To investigate the role of spectral pattern information in the perception of foreign-accented speech, we measured the effects of spectral shifts on judgments of talker discrimination, perceived naturalness, and intelligibility when listening to Mandarin-accented English and native-accented English s...
| Published in: | Language & Speech Vol. 65; no. 2; pp. 418 - 444 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
| Format: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Published: |
Sage Publications Inc.
Jun2022
|
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=156346622&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 156346622 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 00238309 3YY jtl: Language & Speech issn: 00238309 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jun2022 vid: 65 iid: 2 pid: 344 pub: Sage Publications Inc. place: Thousand Oaks, California artinfo: ui: 156346622 151325355 156346622 156346622 10.1177/00238309211029679 156346622 ppf: 418 ppct: 26 formats: tig: atl: Effects of Spectral Envelope and Fundamental Frequency Shifts on the Perception of Foreign-Accented Speech. aug: au: Kapolowicz, Michelle R. Guest, Daniel R. Montazeri, Vahid Baese-Berk, Melissa M. Assmann, Peter F. affil: University of California Irvine, USA sug: subj: Speech Perception Phonetics Language Speech Acoustics Human Speech Intelligibility Analysis of Variance Adolescence Adult Male Female Texas Repeated Measures Hearing Tests Middle Age Logistic Regression Sound Spectrography Descriptive Statistics Adolescent: 13-18 years Adult: 19-44 years Middle Aged: 45-64 years Male Female ab: To investigate the role of spectral pattern information in the perception of foreign-accented speech, we measured the effects of spectral shifts on judgments of talker discrimination, perceived naturalness, and intelligibility when listening to Mandarin-accented English and native-accented English sentences. In separate conditions, the spectral envelope and fundamental frequency (F0) contours were shifted up or down in three steps using coordinated scale factors (multiples of 8% and 30%, respectively). Experiment 1 showed that listeners perceive spectrally shifted sentences as coming from a different talker for both native-accented and foreign-accented speech. Experiment 2 demonstrated that downward shifts applied to male talkers and the largest upward shifts applied to all talkers reduced the perceived naturalness, regardless of accent. Overall, listeners rated foreign-accented speech as sounding less natural even for unshifted speech. In Experiment 3, introducing spectral shifts further lowered the intelligibility of foreign-accented speech. When speech from the same foreign-accented talker was shifted to simulate five different talkers, increased exposure failed to produce an improvement in intelligibility scores, similar to the pattern observed when listeners actually heard five foreign-accented talkers. Intelligibility of spectrally shifted native-accented speech was near ceiling performance initially, and no further improvement or decrement was observed. These experiments suggest a mechanism that utilizes spectral envelope and F0 cues in a talker-dependent manner to support the perception of foreign-accented speech. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|