Effects of Feedback Filtering on Nasalization and Self-Perception of Nasality

Abstract

The effects of feedback filtering on nasality perception were investigated by having speakers produce sentences while hearing their voices unfiltered and low-pass filtered with cut-off frequencies of 1000, 500, and 300 Hz. As they spoke, speakers judged the nasality in their productions using a ratio scale. Measurements of nasalization were made with a miniature accelerometer attached to the side of the speaker's nose. Data obtained indicate that the speakers decreased their nasalization slightly when they heard their voices low-pass filtered at each cut-off frequency. However, they did not perceive consistent changes in their own nasality during the filtered conditions. These findings are interpreted as suggesting that nasalization is influenced by filtering air-conducted auditory information and that relationships between the acoustic correlates of nasalization and self-perception of nasality are complex.

Influence of Sound Immersion and Communicative Interaction on the Lombard Effect

“…After being reported qualitatively by Lombard (1911), this regulation effect was then quantified (Egan, 1972;Fairbanks, 1954;Lane, Tranel, & Sisson, 1970) and gave rise to many psychophysiological studies on the concept of the audio-phonation loop. Researchers have demonstrated how a similar regulation also occurs for other voice parameters, such as pitch (Elman, 1981, Ternström, Sundberg, & Collden, 1988 or spectral content (Burzynski & Starr, 1985, S. R. Garber, Siegel, & Pick, 1981, and how a perturbation of the audio-phonation loop can affect speech control and disfluency (Conture, 1974;S. F. Garber & Martin, 1977).…”

The potential use of Forbrain® in stuttering: A single-case study

“…Most typical versions of AAF include masked auditory feedback (MAF), in which the speech signal is presented under a white or pink noise, delayed auditory feedback (DAF) in which the feedback is delayed regarding the input for about 50---250 ms, and frequency-altered feedback (FAF), where an increase or decrease in the fundamental frequency of the speech is applied to the feedback (Lincoln, Packman & Onslow, 2006). There are other less clinically used forms of AAF, such as the Lombard effect (Arciuli, Simpson, Vogel, & Ballard, 2013;Garnier, Henrich, & Dubois, 2010;Stathopoulus et al, 2014), sidetone amplification (Garber, Siegel, & Pick, 1976;Heinks-Maldonado & Houde, 2005;Bauer, Mittal, Larson, & Hain, 2006) and the so-called feedback filtering (Burzynski & Starr, 1985;Garber et al, 1976;Garber, Siegel, & Pick, 1980, 1981, which alter the speech input in the amplitude domain or in specific frequency bands. These forms of AAF have been shown also to affect speech in fluent speaking adults and stutterers (Martin, Siegel, Johnson, & Haroldson, 1984).…”

“…The resulting sound is delivered through the bones by a process of bone conduction, so that the travelling waveform of a sound can reach the inner ear, induce a travelling wave in the basilar membrane and hence stimulate the cochlea by the same mechanisms as normal air conduction but via bone vibration (Stenfelt & Goode, 2005). Compared to other AAF devices for the treatment of stuttering, one major difference of Forbrain ® is that it provides AAF in the amplitude domain (Escera, López-Caballero, & Gorina-Careta, 2018), similar to that of the semitone amplification (Bauer et al, 2006;Garber et al, 1976;Heinks-Maldonado & Houde, 2005) or feedback filtering (Burzynski & Starr, 1985;Garber et al, 1976Garber et al, , 1980Garber et al, , 1981. Moreover, a recent study conducted in healthy volunteers with no personal or familiar history of speech or language disorders showed that Forbrain ® , when in use, alters the speaking voice of its users (Escera et al, 2018).…”

The Potential Effect of Forbrain as an Altered Auditory Feedback Device

“…It has been suggested that altered auditory feedback (AAF) in several of its different forms, such as masked auditory feedback, delayed auditory feedback, and frequency-altered feedback (Lincoln, Packman, & Onslow, 2006), may play an important role in ameliorating the symptoms of some of these disorders, for example, in stuttering (Cai et al, 2012;Packman, 2012) and SSD (Cummings & Barlow, 2011). Also, other less clinically used forms of AAF, such as the Lombard effect (Arciuli, Simpson, Vogel, & Ballard, 2013;Garnier, Henrich, & Dubois, 2010;Stathopoulos et al, 2014), sidetone amplification (Bauer, Mittal, Larson, & Hain, 2006;Garber, Siegel, & Pick, 1976;Heinks-Maldonado & Houde, 2005), and the so-called feedback filtering (Burzynski & Starr, 1985;Garber et al, 1976;Garber, Siegel, & Pick, 1980, 1981, which alter the speech input in the amplitude domain or in specific frequency bands, have been shown to affect speech in fluentspeaking adults and those who stutter (Martin, Siegel, Johnson, & Haroldson, 1984) and in children with SSD (Siegel & Kennard, 1984). AAF refers to a range of procedures that, through electronic or digital manipulation, alter the speaker's voice so that it is perceived differently from normal (Fairbanks, 1954;Yates, 1963).…”

“…These two settings are switched to by the user's voice energy at 1 kHz over a time window of integration ranging 10-200 ms (see technical description in Method section). The resulting sound flow, which is altered in its frequency spectrum by the dynamic equalizer, is then delivered through bone conduction to the temporal bones, thus providing AAF, presumably in the amplitude domain, as with, for example, semitone amplification (Bauer et al, 2006: Garber et al, 1976Heinks-Maldonado & Houde, 2005) or feedback filtering (Burzynski & Starr, 1985;Garber et al, 1976Garber et al, , 1980Garber et al, , 1981.…”