Abstract:

Sensimetrics Corporation has been engaged in developing and testing interactive, multimedia educational software in acoustic phonetics for more than three years. The course software contains a nonmathematical presentation of major topics in acoustic phonetics, a lab in which students can record and analyze their own speech, and a library in which students can look up technical terms, hear and see spectrograms of IPA examples, and find readings related to the topics covered in the course software. Topics covered in the software include reading spectrograms, basic vowel acoustics, articulatory-acoustic relations in vowels, speaker differences in vowels, acoustic characteristics of constants, aerodynamic effects in consonant production, perception of acoustic cues, identification and discrimination experiments, native and nonnative perception of consonants, and perceptual normalization of vowels. Faculty volunteers at various educational institutions used components of the course and solicited anonymous, written feedback from over 200 graduate and undergraduate students in Communication Disorders/Speech and Hearing Science during the '94--'95 and '95--'96 academic years. The volunteers also provided written comments on the course software. The results indicate that the course software is a useful adjunct to traditional teaching methods. [Work supported by NIH Grant No. 9 R44 MH 51970-02.]