Spectral motion contrast as a speech context effect

Abstract

Spectral contrast effects may help "normalize" the incoming sound and produce perceptual constancy in the face of the variable acoustics produced by different rooms, talkers, and backgrounds. Recent studies have concentrated on the after-effects produced by the long-term average power spectrum. The present study examined contrast effects based on spectral motion, analogous to visual-motion after-effects. In experiment 1, the existence of spectral-motion after-effects with word-length inducers was established by demonstrating that the identification of the direction of a target spectral glide was influenced by the spectral motion of a preceding inducer glide. In experiment 2, the target glide was replaced with a synthetic sine-wave speech sound, including a formant transition. The speech category boundary was shifted by the presence and direction of the inducer glide. Finally, in experiment 3, stimuli based on synthetic sine-wave speech sounds were used as both context and target stimuli to show that the spectral-motion after-effects could occur even with inducers with relatively short speech-like durations and small frequency excursions. The results suggest that spectral motion may play a complementary role to the long-term average power spectrum in inducing speech context effects.

Prior context in audition informs binding and shapes simple features

“…The subjective location of a sound can be shifted away from that of a preceding context 18 19 ; the prolonged presentation of amplitude modulation can elevate subsequent modulation detection thresholds 20 ; the prolonged presentation of frequency shifts in spectral peaks or troughs produces a negative ‘afterimage' for the perceived spectral motion of subsequent similar sounds 21 . More recently, it has been demonstrated that prolonged exposure was not always necessary: even very brief contexts lasting as little as 100 ms in some cases can lead to contrastive shifts in the perception of spectral motion 22 23 .…”

Aftereffects of Spectrally Similar and Dissimilar Spectral Motion Adaptors in the Tritone Paradox

“…Afterwards, stationary or ambiguous stimuli seem to drift in the opposite frequency direction. Such contrastive aftereffects were shown by several studies (e.g., Shu et al, 1993 ; Kayahara, 2001 ; Snyder et al, 2008 ; Masutomi and Kashino, 2013 ; Wang and Oxenham, 2014 ; Alais et al, 2015 ). Recently, a considerable literature has grown up around the theme of plasticity in auditory cortex and its functional importance for organisms to be flexible (e.g., Fritz et al, 2003 ; Ulanovsky et al, 2003 ; Nelken, 2004 ; Fritz et al, 2005 , 2007 ; Shamma and Fritz, 2014 ).…”

“…The key aspect of the current study is to replicate and extend the Dawe et al study by revealing that contrastive aftereffects in the tritone paradox are frequency specific. Studies showed that the amount of contrastive aftereffect was significantly reduced when adaptor and test tones were presented in different frequency regions (e.g., Anstis and Saida, 1985 ; Okada and Kashino, 2003 ; Snyder et al, 2009 ; Wang and Oxenham, 2014 ), indicating that adaptation of spectral-motion detectors in the tritone paradox is also frequency specific. Thus, if spectral-motion detectors are involved in the tritone paradox, given that they are frequency specific, the contrastive aftereffects in the tritone paradox should also be frequency specific.…”

A Study of the Effect of Emotions and Software on Prosodic Features on Spoken Utterances in Urdu Language

“…Similarly JRPD with a stable stimuli pattern was measured to determine the psychometric functions in [12]. A large standard [14], focuses on speech formant transition. In this investigation speech category boundary was shifted by the presence and direction of the inducer glide.…”