checking the acoustical difference

[Daniel Kislyuk <scrofa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear listers,
Could you help me with an advice or some literature references?

I’ve two CV syllables, namely /ba/ and /va/, that are clearly perceived and elicit mismatch negativity in ERPs, when used in the odd-ball paradigm. I want to prove that the MMN that I observe is of the phonetic origin while the acoustic difference is so faint, that it won’t be noticed and won’t elicit MMN in a non-speech context.
What kind of approach would you consider to be more reasonable and why?
- take first 25 ms of the stimuli (the part where they do differ) and attach them to the same vowel-like complex tone.
- reverse stimuli spectra around certain frequency (say, 2kHz)  and present participants with the resynthesized sounds
- something else?

Thanks!
Daniel

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Daniel Kislyuk,
St.Petersburg State University
Russia
mail-to: scrofa@yandex.ru