Abstract
It is well known that speech produced in noise has higher intensity, longer duration, and higher fundamental frequency than speech produced in quiet. However, recent studies in our laboratory have indicated that changes in the acoustic properties of speech produced in noise are not limited to changes in the glottal source but may also include significant changes in the acoustic‐phonetic structure of speech reflected in the characteristics of vocal tract transfer function. We investigated the effects of wideband noise on the acoustic properties of vowels. Talkers produced ten American‐English vowels in /hvd/ context. Ten tokens of each vowel were produced in quiet and in the presence of masking noise (90 dB SPL). The results indicate a rather complex pattern of changes in formant frequencies. First, with the exception of the vowels /æ̈ɑ, ɔ/, whenever a significant change in F1 was observed. F1 frequency was higher in the noise condition. Second, F2 frequencies decreased in front vowels and increased in back vowels. The net results of these changes is a more compact vowel space.
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