The influence of noise on vowel and consonant cues

This study assessed the acoustic and perceptual effect of noise on vowel and stop-consonant spectra. Multi-talker babble and speech-shaped noise were added to vowel and stop stimuli at -5 to +10 dB S/N, and the effect of noise was quantified in terms of (a) spectral envelope differences between the noisy and clean spectra in three frequency bands, (b) presence of reliable F1 and F2 information in noise, and (c) changes in burst frequency and slope. Acoustic analysis indicated that F1 was detected more reliably than F2 and the largest spectral envelope differences between the noisy and clean vowel spectra occurred in the mid-frequency band. This finding suggests that in extremely noisy conditions listeners must be relying on relatively accurate F1 frequency information along with partial F2 information to identify vowels. Stop consonant recognition remained high even at -5 dB despite the disruption of burst cues due to additive noise, suggesting that listeners must be relying on other cues, perhaps formant transitions, to identify stops.