ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

3pSP21. Evaluation of individual differences in vowel perception through mimicry.

School of Speech Pathol. and Audiol., Kent State Univ., Kent, OH 44242

In a mapping study using synthetic versions of isolated vowels, certain stimuli seemingly evoked very consistent perceptions of a given vowel quality to individuals that was different from the plurality of listeners. An imitation paradigm was employed to further investigate these differences. Subjects mimicked exemplar, ambiguous, and their individually ``different'' tokens in both speeded and unspeeded conditions. Subsequent identifications of the imitated vowels by phonetically trained judges suggested that subjects' productions in both conditions generally agree with their perceptions. Disagreements were more frequent in the unspeeded task or related to neutralization in the speeded task. Relationships between formant patterns of the stimuli, imitations, and individual vowel spaces will be presented. Implications of the results related to the link between perception and production will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH.]