Gender effects on the resistance of speech to spectral smearing.
Item
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Title
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Gender effects on the resistance of speech to spectral smearing.
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Identifier
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AAI9986352
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identifier
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9986352
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Creator
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Li, Chung-I Angela.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Arthur Boothroyd
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Health Sciences, Audiology | Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
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Abstract
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It is generally believed that most of the difficulties of speech perception accompanying sensorineural hearing loss are caused by a loss of frequency resolution. This belief is supported by experiments with normally hearing listeners in which poor frequency resolution is simulated by artificial smearing of the spectral envelope of speech.;The purpose of the present study was to test the prediction that women's speech is more resistant to the negative effects of spectral smearing than is men's speech. This prediction was based on the hypothesis that spectral smearing degrades speech perception by obscuring the relationships among formant frequencies.;As predicted, scores for women's speech were significantly higher than for men's speech. The smeared bandwidth producing 50% phoneme recognition averaged 2300 Hz for the female talkers and 1800 Hz for the male talkers. The difference of 0.35 octaves (or 28%) was close to that predicted on the basis of gender differences of average formant spacing.;Acoustical measures of the unprocessed speech confirmed that the formant frequencies in the speech of this sample of talkers were in keeping both with that reported in the literature and with predictions based on known anatomical gender differences. The findings support the hypothesis that spectral smearing degrades speech perception by obscuring formant patterns. It was found, however, that the frequency of the second vocal tract formant was a somewhat better predictor of the effects of smearing than any measure of formant spacing.;The smearing used in the present study was of constant bandwidth, regardless of frequency. When measured in terms of octaves, however, the amount of smearing fell with increasing frequency. It is possible, therefore, that the present findings reflect the importance of the second formant in phoneme recognition and the fact that the average frequency of the second formant in women's speech is higher than in men's speech. Before this work can be applied to speech processing in hearing aids, further studies will require more realistic simulations of the effects of sensorineural hearing loss and the control of gender differences other than those of formant frequency.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
