The relation of auditory perceptual ratings of nasality to nasal port area in connected speech

Abstract

Modeling can be used to understand the relation of articulatory movement to the acoustics and perception of speech. Published studies of velopharyngeal orifice size and perceived nasality in clinical populations have not shown a clear relationship between the measures. Two reports based on computational modeling, however, have found a high correlation between ratings of nasality and nasal port area (Bunton & Story, 2012; Bunton, 2013). These studies were based on sustained vowel simulations with nasal port areas ranging from 0 to 0.5 cm2. Expert listeners were able to detect nasality in vowel samples with a nasal port area greater than 0.01 cm2 and nasality rating plateaued with areas greater than 0.16 cm2. The present study extends this work by reporting on nasality ratings based on short connected speech samples simulated with varying nasal port areas. The connected speech samples included either obstruent consonants or approximant consonants to examine whether the relationship between perception and na...