OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of reduced dynamic range on speech understanding when the speech signals are processed in a manner similar to a 6-channel cochlear implant speech processor. DESIGN Signals were processed in a manner similar to a 6-channel cochlear implant processor and output as a sum of sine waves with frequencies equal to the center frequencies of the analysis filters. The ...

In Hungarian, stems ending in a back vowel plus one or more neutral vowels show unusual behaviour: for such stems, the otherwise general process of vowel harmony is lexically idiosyncratic. Particular stems can take front suffixes, take back suffixes or vacillate. Yet at a statistical level, the patterning among these stems is lawful: in the aggregate, they obey principles that relate the prope...

Sound intensity is the primary and most elementary feature of auditory signals. Its discrimination plays a fundamental role in different behaviours related to auditory perception such as sound source localization, motion detection, and recognition of speech sounds. This study was aimed at investigating hemispheric asymmetries for processing intensity of complex tones and consonant-vowel syllabl...

Synopsis Sensorineural hearing loss, is associated with increased forward and backward masking of weak acoustic sub-segments by strong ones, thereby degrading the reception of important cues for identification of consonants. Employment of inter-aural switching, by splitting the speech temporally and presenting alternate segments to the two ears may help in reducing the effect of temporal maskin...

Speaking rate is thought to affect the spectral features of vowels. Target-undershoot models of vowel production predict more spectral reduction and coarticulation of vowels in fast-rate speech than in normal-rate speech. To test this prediction, a meaningful Dutch text of about 850 words was read twice by an experienced newscaster, once at a normal speaking rate and once as fast as possible. A...

A distinction in vowel quantity is typically realized acoustically by vowel duration. Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native speakers supports this. It further suggests that when the duration of a vowel is relatively long (due, e.g., to inherent duration), listeners may also make use of vowel spectra to distinguish vowel quantities. The current project investigates...

A distinction in vowel quantity is typically realized acoustically by vowel duration. Research on the perception of Swedish vowel quantity by adult native speakers supports this. It further suggests that when the duration of a vowel is relatively long (due, e.g., to inherent duration), listeners may also make use of vowel spectra to distinguish vowel quantities. The current project investigates...

This paper sought to determine whether L1 vowel inventory size could be a contributing factor to the use of temporal cues in L2 vowel perception. The participants were L1 Catalan (n=20) and L1 Danish (n=20) EFL learners and L1 English control group (n=7). We hypothesized that the smaller vowel inventory of Catalan could result in difficulties in discerning spectral di...