ASA 129th Meeting - Washington, DC - 1995 May 30 .. Jun 06

1aSC7. Talker-based selective adaptation.

Gary E. Starr

Mark A. Pitt

Dept. of Psych., Ohio State Univ., 1885 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210-1222

The time during perception that the auditory system differentially processes certain classes of sound objects was investigated. For example, in some models of speech perception, only phonetic stimuli are processed in the highest levels of analysis. Prior work in this lab [M. A. Pitt, 2975(A) (1994)] found that stimuli varying in musical timbre yielded selective adaptation results qualitatively similar to those obtained with phonetic stimuli. The generality of this finding was assessed by conducting comparable experiments on a nonphonetic dimension that originates from the same source as a phonetic percept: talker identity. Two selective adaptation experiments were conducted using a voice continuum. Talkers spoke the same vowel. Endpoint adaptors and different-vowel adaptors were presented ipsilateral and contralateral to the ear of identification. Results are similar to prior findings, and suggest that these classes of objects are processed similarly to a fairly abstract level of analysis. [Research supported by NIH.]