Acoustic properties of speech signals are known to be highly variable due to extensive variability in both structural aspects of the body parts involved (length of the vocal tract, volume of the nasal resonators, length and width of the vocal folds...) and the mobile configuration of the organs that are involved in speech production (lip protrusion, vocal tract aperture, tongue configuration...).
Some aspects of this variability are mainly associated with so-called "voice" properties that provide information concerning a speaker's gender, identity, mood... For example, male speakers would tend (on the average) to have thicker vocal folds and longer vocal tracts, which would give rise to both a lower fundamental frequency and lower vocal tract resonancies. But speakers are also able to manipulate their vocal folds' tension and / or their vocal tract configuration (aperture, tongue position) in order to control their fundamental frequency and / or their resonance frequencies in order to produce specific linguistic categories (2 different vowels for example).
This project investigates how listeners process such information in situations where both information (speakers' structural properties and vocal tract configuration) vary.
This is the result of a collaboration with Pr. Deniz Başkent (University Medical Center Groningen-UMCG, ENT Department / Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) and Étienne Gaudrain (Centre de Recherches en Neurosciences de Lyon, CNRS / Université Lyon 1 / INSERM -- University Medical Center Groningen-UMCG, ENT Department).
Communications & Publications
- Crouzet, Olivier, Gaudrain, Etienne & Başkent, Deniz (2019). Perceptual adaptation to formant changes associated with either vowel categories or vocal tract length: Implications for speech perception in cochlear implanted patients. 2019 Conference on Implantable Auditory Prostheses (CIAP), July 14-19, Lake Tahoe, CA, USA. [Download the poster]
This project has received funding from:
- CPER LLSHS Pays de la Loire, Programme DI2L2S (Région Pays de la Loire, Oct.-Dec. 2016);
- CNRS (International Mobility Program, 2017);
- European Community - Campus France co-funding scheme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie "PRESTIGE" Fellowship Programme, n°2017-2-0044, 2017-2018);
- This is still on-going work...