Vibrotactile communication of information about consonants: Vowels mask consonants

Abstract

The perception of consonants in consonant-initial [consonant-vowel (CV)] syllables was measured using a vibrotactile spectral display. The display coded acoustic frequency and intensity on the 24 × 6 vibrotactile matrix of an Optacon transducer. In the first experiment, we found that for consonants spoken in the context of/_a/, subjects could correctly identify eight consonants only about 60% of the time. The second experiment revealed similarly poor performance when subjects tried to identify a set of CV syllables in which the consonants differed only in their places of articulation. The final experiment showed that place of articulation could be distinguished much more reliably when the vowel following the consonant was shortened, thereby reducing backward masking. Display modifications that might improve the tactile perception of consonants by reducing temporal masking are discussed. © 1983 Psychonomic Society, Inc.