Effects of auditory maskers on whistling and voicing

Abstract

The effects of high‐intensity auditory maskers on whistling and voicing pitch matching tasks were studied. Subjects whistled or produced the vowel /ah/ to match the frequency of a target tone. Nine experimental masking conditions were presented randomly: no masker, white noise, a pure tone at the target frequency, three tones above and three tones below the target frequency. Masker tones were presented at either 80 or 100 dB SPL. Mean fundamental frequency of voicing was essentially unaffected by auditory manipulations, i.e., productions obtained during masking conditions were no different than productions in quiet. For whistling, mean fundamental frequency of production appeared to be differentially affected by masker frequency. Masker frequencies lower than the target generally resulted in higher frequency of production. Similar effects were observed for both levels of masking stimuli which argues against an interpretation of the observed effects in terms of a peripheral masking of the production. Rather, we would suggest that the results are consistent with a hypothesis that the behaviors involved in the whistling and voicing tasks are differentially affected by auditory information. [Work supported by NIH Grant 07555.]