Andrew J. Lotto
Keith R. Kluender
Dept. of Psychol., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706
Perception of syllable-initial /d/ and /g/ can be affected by the composition of preceding acoustic information such that, for a series of synthesized consonant-vowel syllables (CVs) varying in onset characteristics of the third formant (F3) and varying perceptually from /da/ to /ga/, subjects are more likely to perceive /da/ when preceded by the syllable /al/, and to perceive /ga/ when preceded by /ar/ [V. A. Mann, Percept. Psychophys. 28, 407--412 (1980)]. In the present studies, this initial finding was replicated, and a second experiment was conducted to evaluate the extent to which the effect could be attributed to general properties of auditory perception. Members of a 10-step series of /da-ga/ syllables varying in F3 onset frequency were preceded by the syllables /ar/ and /al/ and by frequency modulated (FM) glide analogues of F3 from those syllables. Analogues were 150-ms sine wave glides that followed the trajectory of F3 in /al/ or in /ar/, and were amplitude matched to the rms energy within a critical and in the vicinity of F3 for the /al/ or /ar/ syllables. The effects of single FM glides were analogous to those found for /al/ and /ar/, thus suggesting that general contrast effects may be implicated. [Work supported by NIDCD grant DC-00719 and NSF grant DBS-9258482.]