Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA.
Front Psychol. 2013 Jul 2;4:399. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00399. eCollection 2013.
It is well-established that listeners will shift their categorization of a target vowel as a function of acoustic characteristics of a preceding carrier phrase (CP). These results have been interpreted as an example of perceptual normalization for variability resulting from differences in talker anatomy. The present study examined whether listeners would normalize for acoustic variability resulting from differences in speaking style within a single talker. Two vowel series were synthesized that varied between central and peripheral vowels (the vowels in "beat"-"bit" and "bod"-"bud"). Each member of the series was appended to one of four CPs that were spoken in either a "clear" or "reduced" speech style. Participants categorized vowels in these eight contexts. A reliable shift in categorization as a function of speaking style was obtained for three of four phrase sets. This demonstrates that phrase context effects can be obtained with a single talker. However, the directions of the obtained shifts are not reliably predicted on the basis of the speaking style of the talker. Instead, it appears that the effect is determined by an interaction of the average spectrum of the phrase with the target vowel.
人们已经充分认识到，听众会根据前面的短语（CP）的声学特征来改变对目标元音的分类。这些结果被解释为对因说话人解剖结构差异而导致的可变性进行感知归一化的一个例子。本研究考察了听众是否会对单个说话人说话风格差异导致的声学可变性进行归一化。合成了两个元音系列，它们在中央元音和边缘元音之间变化（在“beat”-“bit”和“bod”-“bud”中的元音）。该系列的每个成员都附加到以“清晰”或“简化”说话风格说的四个 CP 中的一个。参与者对这八个语境中的元音进行了分类。对于四个短语集的三个，得到了可靠的分类功能变化。这表明可以通过单个说话者获得短语语境效应。然而，根据说话者的说话风格，获得的变化方向并不可靠地预测。相反，该效应似乎取决于短语的平均频谱与目标元音的相互作用。
