Perceptual confusions for temporally smoothed envelope of consonants in normal hearing listeners

Abstract

The slow time-intensity modulation of the speech envelope, defined as fluctuations in the overall amplitude at rates between about 2 Hz and 50 Hz, can convey important linguistic information, manner of articulation, the presence of voicing, and some prosodic information [1]. The importance of these temporal envelope cues to speech perception has been demonstrated because it is believed that the cues can be treated as the only information available to people with severe or profound sensorineural hearing loss and for cochlear implant (CI) users [2-5]. If listeners with severe or profound hearing loss can only utilize limited fine spectral and temporal information [6], temporal envelope Purpose: The goal of the present study was to investigate the effect of temporal envelope cues on consonant confusions.