Abstract
Humans routinely produce acoustical energy at frequencies above 6 kHz during vocalization, but this frequency range is often not represented in communication devices and speech perception research. Recent advancements toward high-definition (HD) voice and extended bandwidth hearing aids have increased the interest in the high frequencies. The potential perceptual information provided by high-frequency energy (HFE) is not well characterized. We found that humans can accomplish tasks of gender discrimination and vocal production mode discrimination (speech vs. singing) when presented with acoustic stimuli containing only HFE at both amplified and normal levels. Performance in these tasks was robust in the presence of low-frequency masking noise. No substantial learning effect was observed. Listeners also were able to identify the sung and spoken text (excerpts from “The Star-Spangled Banner”) with very few exposures. These results add to the increasing evidence that the high frequencies provide at least redundant information about the vocal signal, suggesting that its representation in communication devices (e.g., cell phones, hearing aids, and cochlear implants) and speech/voice synthesizers could improve these devices and benefit normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
Highlights
Human vocalizations produce acoustic energy at frequencies above 6 kHz, but the perceptual impact of the upper portion of the speech spectrum is often not considered in speech perception research
Best et al (2005) showed that low-pass filtering speech at 8 kHz caused a significant increase in errors in the localization of the speech source in the horizontal plane, though there was no significant effect on localization in the lateral plane
We presented listeners with stimuli that consisted of only high-frequency energy (HFE) extracted from speech and singing, necessitating the use of HFE information to perform behavioral tasks
Summary
Human vocalizations produce acoustic energy at frequencies above 6 kHz, but the perceptual impact of the upper portion of the speech spectrum is often not considered in speech perception research. This trend is likely due to the facts that vocal energy drops off rapidly above 5–6 kHz and that low-frequency speech cues are sufficient for high intelligibility (French and Steinberg, 1947; Fletcher and Galt, 1950). Stelmachowicz et al (2001, 2007) showed that low-pass filtering speech at 5 kHz negatively affects the perception of the voiceless fricatives, especially for children The effects they observed were generally restricted to the phoneme /s/. Children, whose high-frequency audiometric thresholds are typically much better than adults (Stelmachowicz et al, 1989), might be at the greatest risk for detrimental effects of HFE deprivation
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