Auditory Impression Research Articles

The Pronunciation Problems Encounter EFL Learners in Spoken English at University

This research examines the pronunciation difficulties of EFL undergraduate learners at universities when pronouncing English phonemes. It collects data using recorded speech samples, pronunciation tests and questionnaires as part of a research method for collecting data. The instruments used for this study are collecting data and analyzing them. The test materials are prepared in speech levels. Therefore, the observations of these were based on auditory impressions. The results suggest that the participants had a pronunciation challenge with the phonemes in English. This research gives insights and supports ESL teachers in developing teaching techniques that will lessen or eliminate future issues with Arabic speakers' pronunciation of English phonemes.

“Sirens” by Joyce and the Joys of Sirin: Lilac, Sounds, Temptations

The article is devoted to the musical context of the works of James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov. Joyce’s Ulysses, one of the most important literary texts of the twentieth century, is filled with musical allusions and various musical techniques. The chapter “Sirens” is the most interesting in this context as it features a “musical” form and contains a large number of musical quotations. The myth of the singing sirens, recreated by Joyce in images and characters from the modern world, encapsulates the idea of erotic seduction, bringing threat and doom to the seduced. Joyce offers a new version of the sea world filled with music, creating a system of musical leitmotifs and lexical patterns within the text. Developing the themes of temptation, the danger that temptation entails, doom, uniting with the vital forces of the world, and loneliness, Joyce in “Sirens” reveals the semantics of music, showing the specific nature of its effect on listeners. Vladimir Nabokov, who praised Ulysses and devoted a lecture to “Sirens”, is much less musical than Joyce. However, he, like Joyce, also refers to the images of singing sirens and the accompanying images of the aquatic world. One of the central, meaning-making signs in his work is the “Sirin complex”, his pseudonym. This sign, which refers to a large number of pretexts, refers in particular to the lilac (siren’) and to the mythological “musical” sirens. As in Joyce’s work, sirens are present in his texts as mermaids and naiads, or as figures of seducers who fulfil their function and bring doom. Joyce and Nabokov are also united by the presence of recurrent leitmotifs, lexical patterns, and the presence of auditory impressions in their text that are evoked by the sound of the everyday world.

Артикуляторные параметры палатальности и палатализации в монгольских языках

This study determines the articulatory parameters of palatality and palatalization in the northern Mongolian languages of Russia and Mongolia. The research is based on experimental phonetic data obtained through linguistic and instrumental somatic methods, including radiography, dentopalatography, and magnetic resonance imaging. The findings enable us to assert the presence of two approaches for incorporating the concept of softness into their consonant systems. In the Khori-Buryat and Khalkha-Mongolian languages, the dominant acoustic effect for conveying the softness of sound is palatalization. Conversely, in the Kalmyk language, this function is fulfilled by middle-lingual consonants. In Mongolian languages, palatalization is characterized by more than just the upward movement of the middle part of the tongue to the hard palate, as commonly presumed in general phonetics. Additionally, it entails the forward and upward movement of the entire compressed body of the tongue. The speech tract rearrangement produces a significant posterior pharyngeal area within the resonator cavity. This particular formation is responsible for amplifying highfrequency components in the audio signal spectrum, which are perceptually associated with the softness of sound. The differences in the linguistic status of palatality (softness) and palatalization (softening) in the languages under consideration are determined by the peculiarities of the structural and taxonomic organization of the phonico-phonological systems. Despite the genetic proximity of the Khori-Buryat, KhalkhaMongolian, and Kalmyk languages, each language employs distinct pronunciation strategies to create the auditory impression of softness. These tactics are influenced by the unique articulatory-acoustic characteristics developed within each ethnic group over centuries

Effects of the preference for acoustic stimuli on sleep quality

Since pharmacological treatment for sleep disorders has a risk of addiction, developments of non-pharmacological tools are needed. Colored-noise sounds characterized by the power spectrum, e.g., white, pink, brown, blue, and purple noises, are used in some non-pharmacological sleep aids. Former reports showed that white and pink noises were effective for sleep, however the mechanisms how such noises promote sleep remain unknown. In this study, we proposed a hypothesis that effects of colored noises are depending on participants' auditory impressions and examined how each participant's preference for the noises affected sleep-quality indices (the sleep latency and the duration of slow-wave sleep (SWS)). Sleep states of each participant were examined by EEG in three conditions: (i) listening the most preferred noise, (ii) listening the least preferred noise for each subject and (iii) no sound stimulation. Sleep experiments were started at 3:00 PM in a soundproof room and the stimulus began to be presented at lights-out and continued for 60 min. In results obtained, there were no significant differences in the sleep-quality indices among the three conditions. Since duration of the experiment may not be enough to observe the effect of the stimuli, further investigations are needed after reviewing the experimental conditions.

Designing the rotary switch operation feeling based on cross-modal correspondences between tactile and auditory sensations

In recent years, the number of physical switches in in-vehicle devices has been reduced by consolidating several different control functions into a single control interface through active tactile devices. However, for such tactile devices to provide an improved user experience, the design must be carefully created to provide an appropriate operational feeling for each control function. The aim of this study was to find the best suitable combination of tactile and auditory sensations for the rotary knob-type tactile device to improve the user experience. The Semantic Differential method was used in the first experiment to evaluate electronically generated operating sounds, which enables the determination of the relationship between auditory impressions and acoustic features. In the second experiment, "the suitability of the combination of stimuli" was used to evaluate the impressions as an index during the simultaneous presentation of tactile and operating sounds. The results revealed a tendency for the stimuli to be perceived as "well-combined," with cross-modal correspondences between tactile and auditory sensations.

Effects of sound insulation and light reflection of desktop partitions on subjective impression during conversation

In recent years, transparent desktop partitions have often been placed in public spaces to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, to clarify the view during conversation, surface materials with low light-reflectivity are developed for the partitions. In this paper, we conducted sound insulation measurements for partitions with four different materials, and two psychological experiments in order to examine the audio-visual effects on the ease of conversation. First, in non-visual conversation between two persons, better subjective evaluation of speech transmission was confirmed for partitions with lower surface density which have less insertion loss. However, in normal audio-visual conversation, the low light-reflective partitions got higher evaluations of not only visual but also auditory impressions, regardless of sound insulation performance. In addition, subjective evaluations among different materials varied in the quiet condition more remarkably than in the noisy condition.

Auditory impression of amplitude-modulated vehicle horn sounds and their detectability in noisy environment

Vehicle horn sounds, due to their high sound pressure levels, induce negative psychological reactions in listeners, especially pedestrians. In order to reduce such negative effects, a horn sound with a lower sound pressure level is desired. At the same time, a horn sound should be easily perceived by drivers, considering its use on busy roads. The amplitude-modulated horn sound may help to solve these problems. Therefore, we synthesized amplitude-modulated horn sounds, and conducted psychoacoustical experiments to investigate the relationship between the acoustic characteristics and the perceived quality of these sounds. The results showed that stimuli with shallower modulation depths were less unpleasant than those with deeper modulation depths, and stimuli with modulation frequencies below 40 Hz suppressed auditory unpleasantness more than those with higher modulation frequencies. To confirm their effectiveness for detection in noisy conditions, stimuli with different signal-to-noise ratios were created by combining the amplitude-modulated horn sound and road traffic noise. The amplitude-modulated horn sound in road traffic noise was detected even in conditions where the signal-to-noise ratio was 3 dB lower than when the horn sound was not amplitude-modulated. The results indicate that amplitude-modulated horn sounds have the potential to improve the sound environment around roads.

Effects of expectation on auditory impression of car door-closing sounds

If consumers have preconceptions or expectations about a product, these may influence their evaluation of the product sound. In this study, a psychoacoustic experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of preconception about the product on the perceived quality of the product sound. First, participants were presented with information about three different classes of cars (kei car, economy car and luxury car), including pictures, prices and displacements, and were asked to imagine the door-closing sound of each class of car, and evaluate the auditory imagery of door-closing sounds recalled from the three types of car information using the semantic differentials method. Next, five door-closing sounds were presented, assuming that they were the sounds of each car type. Participants rated perceived quality of stimuli using the same method. As a result, the stimulus of a kei car presented as the door-closing sound of a luxury car was rated as more luxurious than the same stimulus presented as that of a kei car. Similar results were obtained for the stimulus of a luxury car. These results indicate the effect of preconceptions (or expectations) on the auditory impression of the door-closing sounds.

Effects of the preference for acoustic stimuli on sleep quality

Since pharmacological treatment for sleep disorders has a risk of addiction, developments of non-pharmacological tools to enhance sleep are needed. Colored noise sounds characterized by the power spectrum, e.g., white, pink, brown, blue, and purple noises, have been used in some non-pharmacological sleep aids. Former reports showed that white and pink noises were effective for sleep, however the mechanisms how such noises promote sleep remain unknown. In this study, we proposed a hypothesis that effects of colored noises are depending on participants' auditory impressions and examined how each participant's preference for the noises affected sleep-quality indices (sleep latency and duration of slow-wave sleep (SWS)). Sleep states of each participant were examined by EEG in three conditions: (i) the most preferred and (ii) the least preferred noises for each subject, and (iii) no stimulation. Sleep experiments were started at 3:00PM in a soundproof room and the stimulus began to be presented at lights-out and continued for 60 min. In results obtained, there were no significant differences in the sleep quality indices among the three conditions. Since duration of the experiment may not be enough to observe the effect of the stimuli, further investigations are needed after reviewing the experimental conditions.

Effects of Artificial Synthetic Speech Control of SNR and Speech Rate on the Intelligibility of Train Station Announcements

AbstractAn experimental study on the effect of the speech characteristics of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and speech rate on the intelligibility of announcements at railway stations was conducted using an artificial synthetic voice. Synthesized speech has recently been used in noisy environments both indoors and outdoors, but unlike its use in quiet environments, when the environment is noisy, the intelligibility of announcements may be reduced. For railway station announcements, while natural spoken voices are currently used for multilingual announcements and disaster response broadcasts, deep neural network synthesized voices, which use deep learning, have also been adopted. However, the effect of the acoustic characteristics such as the SNR and speech rate on the intelligibility of reproduced announcements in noisy public spaces such as railway stations has not yet been clarified from a practical viewpoint. In this paper, in order to determine the appropriate SNR and speech rate for synthetic voice announcements in railway stations, auditory impressions of announcements with varying SNR and speech rate were evaluated by participants using a five-point scale. Based on the evaluations, the appropriate conditions for the broadcast of synthetic voice announcements at the ticket gate and on the platform of a station are discussed.

Melody of Vocants: Fixed Pattern or Shaped by Hearing?

Vocants as infants' first vocalic utterances are produced laryngeally while the vocal tract is maintained in a neutral position. These "primitive" sounds have sometimes been described as largely innate and, therefore, as sounding alike in both healthy and hearing-impaired young infants. The objective of this study is to compare melody features of vocants, recorded during face-to-face interaction, between infants (N = 8) with profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss (HI group) and age-matched (N = 18) controls (CO) group. The question was as follows: does a lack of auditory feedback have a noticeable effect on melodic features of vocants? The cooing database totalled 6,998 vocalizations (HI: N = 2,847; CO: N = 4,151), all of which had been recorded during the observation period of 60-181 days of age. Identification of the vocants (N = 1,148) was based on broadband spectrograms (KAY-CSL) and auditory impressions. Fundamental frequency (F0) analyses were performed (PRAAT) and the pattern of the F0 contour (melody) analysed using specific in-lab software (CDAP, pw-project). Generalized mixed linear models were used to perform group comparisons. There was a clear predominance of a simple rising-falling pattern (single melody arcs) in vocants of both groups. Nonetheless, significantly more complex contours, particularly, double-arc structures, were found in vocants of the CO group. Moreover, vocants of the HI group were shorter than those uttered by the CO group, while the mean F0 did not significantly differ. Vocants are characterized by both, innate features, found in HI and CO groups, and features that additionally require a functioning auditory system. Even at an early pre-linguistic stage, somatosensory sensations cannot compensate for a lack of auditory feedback. Vocants might be relevant in the early diagnosis of hearing disorders and assessments of the effectiveness of, or adjustments required to, hearing aids.

Multimodal impressions of voice quality settings: the role of vocal and visual symbolism

This study considers instances of voice quality settings under a sound-symbolic and synesthetic perspective, focusing on the auditory impressions these settings might have on listeners' attributions of meaning effects and associations between vocal and visual features related to emotional expression. Three perceptual experiments are carried out. The first experiment examined the impressionistic effects of eight voice quality settings characterized by differences in pitch. The second experiment examined the impressionistic effects of seven voice quality settings characterized by productions with the presence or absence of turbulent airflow, irregularity, and tenseness. The third experiment investigated associations between facial expressions of basic emotions and voice quality characteristics. Data are considered in terms of acoustic (fundamental frequency values), articulatory (reduced or expanded length of the vocal tract), perceptual impressions of size (big/small), strength (strong/weak), brightness (dark, clear), and distinctiveness (muffled/distinct), and visual features (facial expressions of the basic emotions sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, and neutrality). The results provide corroborating evidence of existing links between sound and meaning and are discussed in relation to the frequency, production, sirenic biological codes, phonetic metaphors, and the vocal and facial gestures involved in emotional expression.

Tracking Some Phonetic Terms in the Arabic Lesson: A Descriptive Analytical Research

This research aims to shed light on some phonetic linguistic terms used in the Arabic phonetic lesson for the purpose of monitoring, analyzing and tracking its developments. Such a step helps to standardize and weigh between them. The study follows a descriptive-analytical approach; it surveys the problem of the phonetic linguistic term, and its linguistic exactness. Then, it examines some phonetic terms in the Arabic phonetic lesson, such as phonology and phonology; intensity, looseness and mediation; the production, articulatory, transition, position, and the two vocal chords. One of the most prominent conclusions of the study is that the phonetic linguistic terminology enjoyed a tangible development since its infancy, given that phonetics was in the process of emerging and did not reach maturity. Besides, the auditory impression and the western borrowing have a major role in the diversity of the phonetic linguistic terminologies. This is because the multiplicity issue of the linguistic term in general and the phonetic term in particular in Arabic linguistic studies has become one of the problems that Arab researchers suffer from. It has become a source of hesitation whether to choose a given phonetic term or another. This further reflects being unsettled or the lack of agreement on the standards and foundations of the use and translation of the phonetic term. More so, most of the sources on which the research relied on are translated sources that basically reflect the problems of confusion, ambiguity and inaccuracy in the meaning of the term.

A Class of Pareto Optimal Binaural Beamformers

The objective of binaural multi-microphone speech enhancement algorithms can be viewed as a multi-criteria design problem as there are several requirements to be met. The objective is not only to extract the target speaker without distortion, but also to suppress interfering sources (e.g., competing speakers) and ambient background noise, while preserving the auditory impression of the complete acoustic scene. Such a multi-objective problem (MOP) can be solved using a Pareto frontier, which provides a useful trade-off between the different criteria. In this paper, we propose a unified Pareto optimization framework, which is achieved by defining a generalized mean squared error (MSE) cost function, derived from a MOP. The solution to the multi-criteria problem is grounded on a solid mathematical foundation. The MSE cost function consists of a weighted sum of speech distortion (SD), partial interference reduction (IR), and partial noise reduction (NR) terms with scaling parameters that control the amount of IR and NR. The filter minimizing this generalized cost function, denoted Pareto optimal binaural multichannel Wiener filter (Pareto-BMWF), constitutes a generalization of various binaural MWF-based and binaural MVDR-based beamformers. This solution is optimal for any set of parameters. The improved speech enhancement capabilities are experimentally demonstrated using real-signal recordings when estimation errors are present and the binaural cue preservation capabilities are analyzed.

Erroneous Word-Stress Patterns Used by EFL Yemeni Learners

This experimental study aims at investigating the English word-stress patterns used by Yemenis, learning English as a foreign language, and the erroneous stress patterns used by them. Accent or stress is a feature of high significance in English speech. At the level of a word, one syllable gets accentuated with primary stress. To achieve the purpose of this study, and to find out to what extent word stress of Received Pronunciation English poses difficulty on Yemeni Arabic speakers using English as a foreign language, 120 subjects of various scientific disciplines, were chosen for data collection. They were recorded and their utterances went through deep analysis based on the auditory impression of the researcher and on the spectrographic evidence resulting from the speech analysis of the software program PRAAT. The most significant findings reached by the researcher were that word-stress in the four-syllable target words were the most problematic for the speakers in which 53.2% of them put the stress, randomly, on the wrong syllables in words. Three-syllable target words appeared to be less problematic as 44.4% of the participants placed the stress inaccurately in words. The least difficulties encountered by the speakers were with the two-syllable target words where 70.6% of the speakers managed to pronounce the words with correct stress placement. It is noteworthy to mention that there was a tendency among the speakers who produced wrong stress patterns, to accent either the first syllable or the one including a long vowel or a diphthong in the words.

Job satisfaction in a group of patients with tinnitus.

Tinnitus is an auditory impression without any external auditory stimulus. It may cause negative symptoms (anxiety, insomnia, depression) significantly affecting work performance and job satisfaction. To evaluate the job satisfaction in tinnitus sufferers. Cross-sectional study were conducted and 51 individuals (23-70 years) were recruited. Participants completed two questionnaires: Tinnitus Handicap Inventory and Job Satisfaction Scale. People affected by tinnitus report higher job satisfaction than healthy people. Job satisfaction was significantly related to age: r = 0.31; p < 0.05 in all tinnitus patients. There was a correlation between job satisfaction and tinnitus severity but only in people with normal hearing (-0.69; p < 0.05). The results show that job satisfaction is affected by the level of tinnitus annoyance (from both its emotional and functional aspects), but only in people with normal hearing. In future research it is recommended that additional factors be investigated, both work and non-work related, to thoroughly explore the impact of tinnitus on job satisfaction.

Effects of multiple early diffuse reflections on spatial percepts.

While the use of diffuse surfaces is becoming increasingly common in the acoustical design of performance venues and normal rooms, there is a paucity of data on the auditory perceptual effects that characterize those finishes compared to specular ones. For instance, it is not entirely clear whether and how the aural impression is affected when first reflections are swapped from specular to diffuse. In a recent work, after revising the background knowledge on physical and perceptual effects of scattering, Visentin et al. [(2020) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 148(1), 122-140] started a systematic analysis of how diffuse reflections influence the auditory impression by considering the simplest possible case, that is, a direct sound and one lateral reflection. The present work is a step forward in the analysis, and pairs of lateral reflections without or with a ceiling reflection are considered. By means of detailed listening tests, it is shown how diffuse reflections modulate the perception of some spatial attributes. This knowledge adds to the criteria to be employed when including diffusing surfaces in the design of first reflections in rooms.

Effects of degree of consonance and temporal pattern of the auditory signals on the auditory impression of warning

Disaster alerts are usually accompanied by auditory signals at the beginning. It is to be desired that the auditory signal itself produces the sense of warning. Effects of (1) degree of consonance and (2) temporal pattern of the auditory signal on the auditory impression of warning were investigated using paired-comparison tests. In the both tests, sequences of 3 triads were used as stimuli. First, 7 types of stimuli were generated by varying the degree of consonance of the triad (frequency ratio of sinusoids was varied systematically from 2:3:4, 4:5:6, 6:7:8, 8:9:10, 10:11:12, 12:13:14 through to 14:15:16). Each subject showed changes of the auditory impression of warning depending on the degree of consonance, however, variation among subjects were observed. Second, 21 types of stimuli were generated in total by changing several temporal parameters (duration of the triad, interval between the triads, duty rate of the sequence). The results indicated that the auditory impression of warning increased as the duration of the triad increased the interval between the triads decreased.

“To be honest, I’m pretty fat. Actually, I’m very fat”. Adjective fat as a Representation of the Concept of Obesity (Based on Corpus Data) – Preliminary Remarks

The article attempts to reconstruct the concept of obesity on the example of the adjective fat as one of its lexical representation. As a material for analysis, the texts of contemporary fiction (1990s–XXI century) obtained from the National Corpus of the Polish Language are used. An overweight people are characterized in the extracted material in physical, mental, aesthetic and social aspects. In the physical aspect, the face, teeth, hairstyle, hair color and appearance, height and size, as well as the physical activity are examined. Symptomatic for the physical aspect is the use of intensifiers: very obese, unbelievably obese, indecently obese. Within the mental aspect, character traits, intellectual potential, self-esteem and drug addiction are analysed. In the social aspect, attention is paid to the reluctant attitude of the environment towards obese people, the relationship of obese people with the opposite sex, as well as the main fields of activity, mainly excessive eating. As part of the aesthetic aspect, auditory, visual and olfactory impressions are analyzed. In the course of analysis lexical units used to characterize obese people are identified. The analysis shows that obese people are repulsive, unaesthetic, they smell badly and look unattractive, they eat all the time and move with difficulty. They are usually friendly and kind, but they have complexes about their looks.

Acehnese Onomatopoeias: Investigating, Listing, and Interpreting Their Meanings

Sound-imitating words, called onomatopoeia, present in most of languages in the world including Acehnese language, one of traditional languages in Indonesia, in which a great deal of onomatopoeias exist in it due to its unique constructions of onomatopoeia. Otherwise, this research aims at finding out kinds of Acehnese onomatopoeias understood and spoken among native Acehnese people by using Pidie dialect. Thus, five people in the Pidie Jaya regency were sorted out to be the subject informants by actualizing purposive and snowball technique. Moreover, a descriptive qualitative method was manifested in the research by actualizing some instruments to get the data such as structured interviewing and documentation. Hence, all of the data were interpreted in words by listing, transcribing their phonetics orderly, as well as describing both their function and meaning. A three-step analysis – data reduction, data verification, and data display-- was employed to describe the data gathered. Result of the research reveals that Acehnese Onomatopoeias covers a wide range of expressions in sound-imitating words in which are categorized into three big classes; Phonomimes which includes auditory impressions of various imitative sounds of animals, objects, oral-related sounds, nasal-related sounds, action-related sounds; Phenomimes -- mimetic words to describe objects’ condition and human’s activities such as visual impressions, attitude-related impressions -- characteristics, laughing manners, speaking manners -- object condition impressions, body trait impressions; Psychomimes – symbolizing psychological state or inner feelings – include sensation impressions like taste, smell, temperature, inner sensation impressions such as headache sensations, skin ache sensations, body ache sensations, and emotional impressions like crying and nervousness. Still, most of Acehnese onomatopeic words are in forms of repetition and nasalization which seems to be more unique compared to other languages.