Modifying speech

[Fatima Husain <fhusain@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List,

Sorry to barge into an interesting discussion, but -
My lab wants to image subjects listening to normal and modified speech.
We are trying to investigate semantic memory.
The modified speech is generated from normal speech, retains more or less
of the spectral features of the normal speech, yet is not pseudo-word
like. The reason some of us don't like pseudo words is that, many subjects
treat words and pseudo-words in the same manner, activating a mental
lexicon and semantic memory (what we are interested in).

We looked at reversed speech and low-pass filtered speech. But these were
either too foreign-language-like (according to naive listeners) or too
much like humming.

I would be grateful if someone would suggest suitable methods of
modifying speech to fulfill our (somewhat vague) requirements.

Thanks,
--fatima

fhusain@cns.bu.edu
fthusain@helix.nih.gov