Mitsuya Takashi, Purcell David W
National Centre for Audiology, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Western University, Elborn College, Room 1207, London, Ontario, N6G 1H1, Canada.
National Centre for Audiology, School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Western University, Elborn College, Room 2262D, London, Ontario, N6G 1H1, Canada.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2016 Dec;140(6):4017. doi: 10.1121/1.4968539.
The importance of auditory feedback for controlling speech articulation has been substantiated by the use of the real-time auditory perturbation paradigm. With this paradigm, speakers receive their own manipulated voice signal in real-time while they produce a simple speech segment. In response, they spontaneously compensate for the manipulation. In the case of vowel formant control, various studies have reported behavioral and neural mechanisms of how auditory feedback is processed for compensatory behavior. However, due to technical limitations such as avoiding an electromagnetic artifact or metal transducers near a scanner, some studies require foam tip insert earphones. These earphones occlude the ear canal, and may cause more energy of the unmanipulated first formant to reach the cochlea through bone conduction and thus confound the effect of formant manipulation. Moreover, amplification of lower frequencies due to occluded ear canals may influence speakers' voice amplitude. The current study examined whether using circumaural headphones and insert earphones would elicit different compensatory speech production when speakers' first formant was manipulated in real-time. The results of the current study showed that different headphones did not elicit different compensatory formant production. Voice amplitude results were varied across different vowels examined; however, voice amplitude tended to decrease with the introduction of F1 perturbation.
实时听觉扰动范式的应用证实了听觉反馈对控制言语清晰度的重要性。采用这种范式时，说话者在发出一个简单言语片段的同时实时接收自己被操控的语音信号。作为回应，他们会自发地对这种操控进行补偿。在元音共振峰控制方面，多项研究报告了听觉反馈如何被处理以产生补偿行为的行为学和神经机制。然而，由于一些技术限制，如避免在扫描仪附近产生电磁伪影或使用金属换能器，一些研究需要使用泡沫耳塞式耳机。这些耳机会堵塞耳道，可能会使未被操控的第一共振峰的更多能量通过骨传导到达耳蜗，从而混淆共振峰操控的效果。此外，耳道堵塞导致的低频放大可能会影响说话者的语音幅度。本研究考察了当说话者的第一共振峰被实时操控时，使用耳周式耳机和耳塞式耳机是否会引发不同的补偿性言语产生。本研究结果表明，不同的耳机并未引发不同的补偿性共振峰产生。在所考察的不同元音中，语音幅度结果各不相同；然而，随着第一共振峰扰动的引入，语音幅度往往会降低。
