Weitzman R S
Department of Linguistics, California State University, Fresno 93740-0092.
Lang Speech. 1992 Jan-Jun;35 ( Pt 1-2):115-25. doi: 10.1177/002383099203500210.
Using the concept formation paradigm, two series of experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the critical band (CB) was a factor in learning to make absolute discriminations of vowels. The specific hypothesis being examined was that the CB is a psychoacoustic boundary in learning to make vowel categorizations, and that learning absolute discriminations of pairs of vowels that differ in one of their formants by one bark or more is significantly easier than learning absolute discriminations of vowels that differ by less than one bark. Subjects were given the task of learning to identify paired sets of synthesized vowels that differed in either F1 or F2 by 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, or 1.2 bark. The results of these experiments suggest that the critical bandwidth is not a natural psychoacoustic boundary in the learning of vowel categories, and also that subjects seem better able to learn distinctions involving differences in F1 than distinctions involving differences in F2. The discussion raises the possibility that vowels that differ by less than one bark may not be perceptually viable because of such factors as ambient noise, articulatory constraints, and coarticulatory influences. Some evidence from Dutch and French is presented in support of this conjecture.
运用概念形成范式，进行了两个系列的实验，以检验如下假设：临界带宽（CB）是学习对元音进行绝对辨别时的一个影响因素。正在检验的具体假设是，临界带宽是学习进行元音分类时的一个心理声学界限，并且学习对其某一声学共振峰相差一个巴克或更多的元音对进行绝对辨别，要比学习对相差不到一个巴克的元音进行绝对辨别显著更容易。受试者被给予一项任务，即学习识别在F1或F2上相差0.4、0.6、0.8、1.0或1.2巴克的成对合成元音。这些实验的结果表明，临界带宽在元音类别学习中并非一个自然的心理声学界限，而且受试者似乎更能学会涉及F1差异的区分，而非涉及F2差异的区分。讨论提出了这样一种可能性，即相差不到一个巴克的元音，由于诸如环境噪声、发音限制和协同发音影响等因素，在感知上可能不可行。文中给出了来自荷兰语和法语的一些证据来支持这一推测。
