Effects of masking noise on vowel and sibilant contrasts in normal-hearing speakers and postlingually deafened cochlear implant users

Joseph S. Perkell, Margaret Denny, Harlan Lane, Frank Guenther, Melanie L. Matthies, Mark Tiede, Jennell Vick, Majid Zandipour, Ellen Burton
2007 Journal of the Acoustical Society of America  
The role of auditory feedback in speech production was investigated by examining speakers' phonemic contrasts produced under increases in the noise to signal ratio ͑N/S͒. Seven cochlear implant users and seven normal-hearing controls pronounced utterances containing the vowels /i/, /u/, // and /ae/ and the sibilants /s/ and /b/ while hearing their speech mixed with noise at seven equally spaced levels between their thresholds of detection and discomfort. Speakers' average vowel duration and SPL
more » ... generally rose with increasing N/S. Average vowel contrast was initially flat or rising; at higher N/S levels, it fell. A contrast increase is interpreted as reflecting speakers' attempts to maintain clarity under degraded acoustic transmission conditions. As N/S increased, speakers could detect the extent of their phonemic contrasts less effectively, and the competing influence of a͒ Electronic
doi:10.1121/1.2384848 pmid:17297804 fatcat:mtzprsslrvaifjaongkov34r5u