Philip E. Rubin
Haskins Labs., 270 Crown St., New Haven, CT 06511
Robert E. Remez
Jennifer S. Pardo
Jennifer M. Fellowes
Eva Y. Blumenthal
Danielle A. Warren
Bella Schanzer
Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
A recent study by Kuhl et al. (1991) found striking perceptual correspondences between vowels and steady tones. Whether subjects experienced spoken vowels, visually presented images of articulating faces producing vowels, or imaginary vowels, they matched the vowel /(open aye)/ with a low-pitch tone, and /i/ with a high-pitch tone. However, tonal analogs of vowels were matched in the opposite manner, with low pitch associated with the vowel /i/ and high with the vowel /(open aye)/. These sine-wave vowels were therefore excluded from hypothesized recognition mechanisms employing distinctive vowel pitches as perceptual prototypes. This finding is counterevidence to claims that tonal analogs of utterances are perceived through ordinary means. The present study employed sinewave realizations of several words differing solely in the nuclear vowel, /(open aye)/ or /i/, in an attempt to replicate and extend this finding. Subjects were asked to match the predominant pitch or vowel quality of these medial sine-wave vowels to the pitch of a single tone. The results will be discussed with respect to claims about the ordinariness of the perception of sinewave replicas and hypothetically prototypic distinctive vowel pitches. [Research supported by NIDCD and NICHD.]