Subject: Special Session on Size in communication sounds From: Roy Patterson <roy.patterson(at)MRC-CBU.CAM.AC.UK> Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 17:58:23 +0000Hello, We wanted to bring to everyone's attention that there will be a Special Session at the ASA meeting in Vancouver concerning size perception in communication sounds. Below is a version of the blurb that we wrote to the technical committee to convince them that a special session was warranted. If you find it interesting, please feel free to forward the message to anyone you think relevant. If you think you have a paper or poster to contribute please let one of us know. Regards, Roy Patterson and Toshio Irino Special Session at ASA meeting in Vancouver, 16-20 May 2005 Physiological and Psychological Acoustics Joint with Biomedical Ultrasound/Bioresponse to Vibration Title: Size information in speech and animal calls Program Organisers: Roy Patterson and Toshio Irino Email: rdp1(at)cam.ac.uk irino(at)sys.wakayama-u.ac.jp Abstract There is size information in animal communication sounds; if two animals differ only in size, the resonances of the larger animal will be lower in frequency and expanded in time. For animals, size information is important for assessing the sex of an individual and their ability to defend a territory. In human speech, vocal tract length is a major component of variability and the correct parsing of the variability is essential in speech recognition both by humans and machines. Recently, there have been important developments with respect to size in communication sounds, some of which have been reported in JASA but many of which have not. Fitch and colleagues have shown that there is a strong correlation between vocal tract length and body size in most mammalian species (Riede and Fitch, 1999; dogs), (Fitch, 1997; monkeys) and (Fitch and Giedd, 1999), and that mammals have mechanisms for exaggerating their size. Cohen (1993) has described an affine transformation that illustrates how the size and shape information in sounds can be segregated, and Irino and Patterson (2002) have argued that some form of this Mellin Transform provides the basis for vowel normalization in speech communication. Welling and Ney (2003) have demonstrated the importance of size in automatic speech recognition. There are also earlier studies reporting the importance of size information in bats (Altes, 1977) and frogs (Fairchild, 1981; Narins and Smith, 1986) which have not received the appropriate attention. It is also the case that Hideki Kawahara and Peter Boersma have produced high-quality vocoders (STRAIGHT and PRAAT, respectively) that now enable us manipulate the size information in natural speech. Several groups have used STRAIGHT to study the perception of size in speech (e.g. Assmann and Neary, 2003; Kewley-Port (2003) and Smith and Patterson, 2004). Darwin and Brungart (2003) have also demonstrated how PRAAT can be used to manipulate the size information in speech. As yet, these exciting developments are not widely known in the acoustics community. Accordingly, we proposed a special session at the Vancouver meeting to bring this new research area to the attention of JASA members, along with the new tools for understanding and manipulating size in communication sounds. At the September meeting of the British Society of Audiology meeting, we presented four posters on size perception. The posters are available on the CNBH web site if you would like to learn a little about size perception http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/cnbh/ Posters/talks * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** Roy D. Patterson Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing Physiology Department, University of Cambridge Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EG phone 44 (1223) 333819 office fax 44 (1223) 333840 department email rdp1(at)cam.ac.uk or email roy.patterson(at)mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~roy.patterson http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/cnbh * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** * ** *** Roy D. Patterson Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing Physiology Department, University of Cambridge Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EG phone 44 (1223) 333819 office fax 44 (1223) 333840 department email rdp1(at)cam.ac.uk or email roy.patterson(at)mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~roy.patterson http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/cnbh