Holt L L, Lotto A J, Kluender K R
Department of Psychology and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2001 Feb;109(2):764-74. doi: 10.1121/1.1339825.
For stimuli modeling stop consonants varying in the acoustic correlates of voice onset time (VOT), human listeners are more likely to perceive stimuli with lower f0's as voiced consonants--a pattern of perception that follows regularities in English speech production. The present study examines the basis of this observation. One hypothesis is that lower f0's enhance perception of voiced stops by virtue of perceptual interactions that arise from the operating characteristics of the auditory system. A second hypothesis is that this perceptual pattern develops as a result of experience with f0-voicing covariation. In a test of these hypotheses, Japanese quail learned to respond to stimuli drawn from a series varying in VOT through training with one of three patterns of f0-voicing covariation. Voicing and f0 varied in the natural pattern (shorter VOT, lower f0), in an inverse pattern (shorter VOT, higher f0), or in a random pattern (no f0-voicing covariation). Birds trained with stimuli that had no f0-voicing covariation exhibited no effect of f0 on response to novel stimuli varying in VOT. For the other groups, birds' responses followed the experienced pattern of covariation. These results suggest f0 does not exert an obligatory influence on categorization of consonants as [VOICE] and emphasize the learnability of covariation among acoustic characteristics of speech.
对于模拟在语音起始时间（VOT）的声学相关特征上变化的塞音的刺激，人类听众更有可能将f0较低的刺激感知为浊辅音——这种感知模式遵循英语语音产生的规律。本研究考察了这一观察结果的依据。一种假设是，较低的f0通过听觉系统的运作特征所产生的感知交互作用增强了对浊塞音的感知。另一种假设是，这种感知模式是由于对f0与浊音共变的经验而形成的。在对这些假设的一项测试中，日本鹌鹑通过三种f0与浊音共变模式之一的训练，学会了对从一系列VOT变化的刺激中做出反应。浊音和f0以自然模式（VOT较短，f0较低）、反向模式（VOT较短，f0较高）或随机模式（无f0与浊音共变）变化。用无f0与浊音共变的刺激进行训练的鸟类，f0对VOT变化的新刺激的反应没有影响。对于其他组，鸟类的反应遵循所经历的共变模式。这些结果表明，f0对辅音作为[浊音]的分类没有强制性影响，并强调了语音声学特征之间共变的可学习性。
