Abstract:
Research shows that listeners exposed to a repeated sequence of steady-state vowels experience phonemic transformations, and hear words and phrases absent in the original stimulus. Similar observations have been made with whispered stimuli. This study investigated the similarity in the organizations heard with voiced and whispered vowel sequences, each made up of six vowels. Listeners heard each set of stimuli and reported what they heard with each arrangement. Then, additional stimuli were presented identical to the first two sets but with the duration of each vowel longer by 40 ms. These stimuli were presented in a different order, and listeners were asked to match each sequence to the verbal organizations heard initially. Most listeners were able to perform the task when the stimulus conditions corresponded to the organization conditions: ``all voiced'' or ``all whispered.'' Listeners also performed the matching task in the ``voiced/whispered'' condition (when they were asked to match voiced stimuli to organizations heard with whispered stimuli) and in the ``whispered/voiced'' condition (when whispered stimuli were matched to organizations heard with voiced stimuli). The results suggest similarities between perceptual mechanisms responsible for these effects and mechanisms involved in the processing of speech.