Voice F0 responses elicited by perturbations in pitch of auditory feedback during English speech and sustained vowels

Abstract

Twenty-one native speakers of American English were asked to repeatedly inflect the pitch of either the first or second syllable of an English speech phrase or produce non-word sustained vowels while listening to amplified auditory feedback. Brief upward and downward perturbations in pitch of auditory feedback were introduced in real time shortly after vocal onset. Resultant changes in voice F0 due to perturbations in pitch were compared across vocal conditions and perturbation direction. Data indicated that auditory feedback was used in real-time to stabilize voice F0 during both normal English speech and sustained vowels. Incomplete compensatory corrections in voice F0 due to the perturbations in pitch of auditory feedback were prevalent during both dynamic speech (gain: ∼12.7%) and static sustained vowel phonations (gain: ∼19.3%), and appear to be regulated by similar corrective mechanisms. However during dynamic speech, voice F0 was modulated across syllable boundaries in a task-dependent manner according to syllable pitch inflection. Thus, voice F0 responses appear to help maintain the underlying suprasegmental meaning of a speech phrase by delaying the onset of the voice F0 response to coincide with the pitch-inflected syllable. [Work supported by NIH Grant No. F31 DC005874.]