University of Canterbury Home
    • Admin
    UC Research Repository
    UC Library
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
    View Item 
    1. UC Home
    2. Library
    3. UC Research Repository
    4. Faculty of Science | Te Kaupeka Pūtaiao
    5. Science: Theses and Dissertations
    6. View Item
    1. UC Home
    2.  > 
    3. Library
    4.  > 
    5. UC Research Repository
    6.  > 
    7. Faculty of Science | Te Kaupeka Pūtaiao
    8.  > 
    9. Science: Theses and Dissertations
    10.  > 
    11. View Item

    Effects of the prominence of first harmonic on the perception of breathiness and vowel identity. (2013)

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    thesis_fulltext.pdf (1.583Mb)
    Sloane_Use_of_thesis_form.pdf (114.6Kb)
    Type of Content
    Theses / Dissertations
    UC Permalink
    http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9238
    http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/6455
    
    Thesis Discipline
    Audiology
    Degree Name
    Master of Audiology
    Publisher
    University of Canterbury. Communication Disorders
    Collections
    • Science: Theses and Dissertations [4397]
    Authors
    Sloane, Samuel David
    show all
    Abstract

    Title:EFFECTS OF THE PROMINENCE OF FIRST HARMONIC ON THE PERCEPTION OF BREATHINESS AND VOWEL IDENTITY

    Authors: Emily Lin, Samuel Sloane,and Donal Sinex

    Background: Human communication relies on adequate speech intelligibility to enable the comprehension of verbal messages. Dysphonia (i.e., aberrant voice) may not only result in distraction during communication but also interfere with speech intelligibility leading to a communication barrier. One voice quality commonly found in dysphonia is breathiness, which is related to the presence of excessive airflow during phonation due to incomplete glottal closure. Breathiness has been associated with the prominence of the first harmonic (H1) in the acoustic analysis of voice.

    Objectives: This study aimed to determine whether excessiveness in the first harmonic (H1) dominance, which has been associated with breathy voice, may result in the perception of breathiness and compromise vowel intelligibility.

    Methods: Participants included 10 female and 10 male normal-hearing adults, aged between 19 to 40 years. Participant’s tasks included a “breathiness rating” and a “vowel identification” task. For the “breathiness rating” task, a direct magnitude method was employed for the participant to rate a 500-ms long vowel (/i/ and /a/) segmented from sustained vowel phonation. For the “vowel identification” task, the vowel stimuli were segmented out from running speech (“Rainbow passage”) and the participants were asked to listen to one vowel stimulus (/i/, /a/, or /o/; duration: 60 ms) at a time and indicate which vowel (i.e., /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, or /u/) they perceived the stimulus to be. The vowel stimuli included processed and unprocessed voice recordings of individuals with and without voice disorders. Voices showing the lowest, median, and highest amplitude differences between the first two harmonics (H1-H2) were chosen from a voice database for female and male voices respectively. The 18 selected vowel signals (3 vowels X 3 H1-H2 levels X 2 speaker genders) were processed through 12 signal manipulation conditions. The 12 signal conditions involved increasing or decreasing the H1 amplitude of the original signals in six 2-dB interval steps in both directions.

    Results: For the “breathiness rating” task, the five-way (3 vowels X 2 speaker genders X 3 H1-H2 levels X 13 signal conditions X 2 listener genders) Mixed Model Analysis of variance (ANOVA) conducted on the breathiness scores for normal speakers and voice patients separately showed significant findings for various main and interaction effects, such as a significant speaker gender by signal condition by vowel interaction effect on the perception of breathiness [F(12, 96) = 1.95, p = 0.038] for normal voice. An increase of H1-H2 through signal manipulation led to an increase of perceived breathiness only when performed on the vowel /i/ produced by female normal speakers. As for the “vowel identification” task, a relationship between H1-H2 increment and vowel intelligibility was found but the relationship was affected by vowel type, speaker gender, and H1-H2 level. With all vowel types, speaker genders, and H1-H2 levels combined, a significant signal condition effect on the number of incorrect vowel identification was found (2 = 188.585, df = 10, p < 0.001). Generally, it appeared that an increase of H1-H2 would worsen the identification of /i/ but enhance that of /o/.

    Conclusion: The relationship between H1 dominance and perceived breathiness was non-linear. Factors found to disrupt the linear relationship included speaker gender, vowel type, and the extent of H1 dominance. In addition, there was evidence that acoustic manipulation of the H1 amplitude would affect vowel intelligibility and the relationship between vowel intelligibility and H1-H2 values also vary by speaker genders and vowel types.

    Keywords
    breathiness; H1-H2; first harmonic amplitude; vowel identification; pathological speech
    Rights
    Copyright Samuel David Sloane
    https://canterbury.libguides.com/rights/theses

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Aero-tactile integration during speech perception: Effect of response and stimulus characteristics on syllable identification 

      Derrick, Donald; Madappallimattam J; Theys C (Acoustical Society of America (ASA), 2019)
      Integration of auditory and aero-tactile information during speech perception has been documented during two-way closed-choice syllable classification tasks [Gick and Derrick (2009). Nature 462, 502–504], but not during ...
    • The effects of an early intervention strategy on the counting, number identification and inhibitory control of children in their first year of school. 

      van Laanen, Tom (University of Canterbury, 2014)
      BACKGROUND: Poor counting and number identification in early childhood adulthood is associated with a wide range of negative adult outcomes. Despite the large amount of research showing a relationship between mathematics ...
    • Effect of noise upon the perception of speech intelligibility in dysarthria 

      McAuliffe, M.J.; Schaefer, M.; O'Beirne, Greg A.; LaPointe, L.L. (University of Canterbury. Communication Disorders, 2009)
      Is the intelligibility of dysarthric speech, at word and phrase-level, affected similarly to normal speech when presented in noise? It is hypothesised that dysarthric speech will show greater declines in intelligibility ...
    Advanced Search

    Browse

    All of the RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThesis DisciplineThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThesis Discipline

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • Research Outputs
    • UC Theses
    • CONTACTS
    • Send Feedback
    • +64 3 369 3853
    • ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz
    • ABOUT
    • UC Research Repository Guide
    • Copyright and Disclaimer
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • Research Outputs
    • UC Theses
    • CONTACTS
    • Send Feedback
    • +64 3 369 3853
    • ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz
    • ABOUT
    • UC Research Repository Guide
    • Copyright and Disclaimer