The perception of formant-frequency range is affected by veridical and judged fundamental frequency

Abstract

The vowels produced by different speakers vary in terms of their fundamental frequency (f0) and formant frequencies (FFs). Variation in the production of a given vowel category between speakers of different sizes is primarily according to a single multiplicative parameter (related to speaker vocal-tract length). This parameter, which we refer to as FF-scaling, has an associated perceptual quality that listeners may use to determine apparent speaker characteristics and vowel quality. In a previous experiment [Barreda and Nearey, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 129, 2661 (2011)], listeners were trained to identify a limited set of voices based on FF-scaling and f0 differences. The current study presented listeners with large number of voices (n = 4000) varying in FF-scaling and f0, arranged in a two-dimensional space where one dimension corresponded to each acoustic characteristic. Listeners were played a voice, and asked to indicate its location on the board, thereby providing an f0 and FF-scaling estimate for the voice. Results indicate that listeners are able to identify voice FF-scaling, and that this decision is informed primarily by veridical voice FF-scaling. However, there is a complicated relationship between perceived f0 and FF-scaling, suggesting an interdependent relationship in the perception of these characteristics.