The identification of high pass filtered vowels

Abstract

Vowels are typically described according to their spectral prominences (i.e., formants). Previous studies have shown that the first three formants provide important information for identification (Hillebrand, Getty, Clark, & Wheeler, 1995; Miller, 1989; Molis, 2005; Peterson & Barney, 1952). The present study measured identification accuracy for six naturally produced vowels spoken by a male and female talker with these spectral prominences removed. The six hVd tokens for each talker were high-pass filtered to remove the first three formants from the vowels and then identified by 24 normal hearing listeners. Results suggest that listeners identified a majority of the tokens above chance levels. The average identification of the male vowels was 29% (range 17%-47%), with two vowels identified with nearly 50% accuracy. Average identification for the six female vowels was 53% (range 37%-72%), with 5 of 6 vowels being identified with over 40% accuracy. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.