Abstract
Darwin and Gardner (1986), in a study of the contribution of mistuned harmonics to the percept of a vowel, discovered that mistunings of only 1-2Hz in harmonics close to the first formant (F1) caused a lowering of the phoneme boundary in a categorization task, indicating that the F1 was perceived as higher in frequency. This occurred whether the mistuned harmonic was just above or just below F1. At larger mistunings, (40Hz) the mistuned harmonic is partially excluded from judgement of the vowel quality and the perceived F1 approaches that heard when the mistuned harmonic is physically absent. The changed percept due to small mistuning of the harmonic was explained by Darwin and Gardner as an effect of the altered relative phase of the harmonic.
ARP was supported by the Royal Society and the MRC, IMW by an SERC studentship and CJD and RBG by the SERC. Thanks to Drs. Carlyon, Rees and Summerfield for helpful criticism of the manuscript.
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References
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Palmer, A.R., Winter, I.M., Gardner, R.B., Darwin, C.J. (1987). Changes in the Phonemic Quality and Neural Representation of a Vowel by Alteration of the Relative Phase of Harmonics Near F1. In: Schouten, M.E.H. (eds) The Psychophysics of Speech Perception. NATO ASI Series, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_29
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