A comparison of the identification and discrimination of synthetic vowel and stop consonant stimuli with various acoustic properties

Abstract

To determine the perceptual effects of particular acoustic properties differentiating synthetic /I–E/ continua, several identification and oddity discrimination experiments were performed. Identification and oddity discrimination were also measured for a /ba–da/ series with and without steady states. For the vowel series, results showed that variation in the third formant throughout the series shifted the identification boundary from the two-formant cued case, and addition to the steady states of transitions and transitions and burst with the same locus across the series /b/, or transitions with varying onset frequencies, appropriate to /b/ in context, had no significant perceptual effects. However, removal of the steady states produced a boundary shift for the /bI–bE/ series with transitions with the same locus, but not the same onset frequencies, and poorer vowel discrimination in both cases. In contrast, removal of the steady states for the /ba–da/ series produced no change in identification and substantially improved discrimination. The results suggest that for consonants the steady states may serve to mask the transition cues, and for vowels, to dominate them perceptually.