A linear-scaling approach is described for handling inter-speaker variations. The approach is motivated (i) by the similarity commonly observed amongst the formant-patterns resulting from different speakers’ productions of the same utterance, and (ii) by the fact that there are linear-scaling properties associated with similarity. In practical terms, linear transformations of the formant-patter...

A sinusoidal replica of a sentence evokes a clear impression of intonation despite the absence of the primary acoustic correlate of intonation, the fundamental frequency. Our previous studies employed a test of differential similarity to determine that the tone analog of the first formant is a probable acoustic correlate of sinusoidal sentence intonation. Though the typical acoustic and percept...

This paper proposes two new approaches for formant tracking using Fourier and wavelet ridges. The speech signal is decomposed into Time-Frequency representations issued from windowed Fourier transform and wavelet transform. Formant tracking is achieved by exploring ridges from time-frequency representation and imposing continuity constraints on formant trajectories. These approaches are validat...

The McGurk effect has generally been studied within a limited range of phonetic contexts. With the goal of characterizing the McGurk effect through a wider range of contexts, a parametric investigation across three different vowel contexts, Iii, Ia/, and /u/, and two different syllable types, consonant-vowel (CV) and vowel-consonant (VC), was conducted. This paper discusses context-dependent ch...

MEG studies have shown that the timing (latency) of the evoked response that peaks approximately 100 ms post-stimulus onset (M100) decreases as frequency increases for sinusoidal tones. We investigated M100 latency using a continuum of synthesized vowel stimuli in which the dominant formant frequency increases from 250 Hz (perceived /u/) to 750 Hz (perceived /a/) in 50 Hz steps. While M100 late...

Pulse-resonance sounds play an important role in animal communication and auditory object recognition, yet very little is known about the cortical representation of this class of sounds. In this study we shine light on one simple aspect: how well does the firing rate of cortical neurons resolve resonant ("formant") frequencies of vowel-like pulse-resonance sounds. We recorded neural responses i...

BACKGROUND Auditory feedback reflects information on multiple speech parameters including fundamental frequency (pitch) and formant properties. Inducing auditory errors in these acoustic parameters during speech production has been used to examine the manner in which auditory feedback is integrated with ongoing speech motor processes. This integration has been shown to be impaired in disorders ...