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Experiments

Experimentalaufbau Phonetik
Mathias Scharinger

The Research Group Phonetics mainly works empirically and collects data from different sources, including experimental paradigms on speech production and perception. Thereby, we hope to further our understanding of human speech and speaker perception, but also of human speech production. Here we present current experiments for which we always welcome participants. We also highlight results from experiments that have been already presented or published.

Current experiments

We are currently working on a hygiene concept for the laboratories and hope to resume laboratory work soon!

Finished experiments

  • Intrinsic pitch in phonetics

    The perception of vowels such as [a] or [i] is based on their spectral properties, i.e. resonance frequencies (formants), and on fundamental frequency (f0). Yet, it is unclear whether early neural indices of vowel processing are predominantly driven by f0 or by formant frequencies. A candidate neural index of early acoustic processing is the N1, a negative evoked potential of the human electroencephalogram (EEG), peaking between 80 and 150 ms after stimulus onset. The N1 has been found to reflect pitch differences in simple tones, but also general vowel differences. However, the relative contributions of formant frequencies and f0 to N1 amplitudes and latencies are not entirely clear. To this end, an EEG study on German vowels differing in both first (F1) and second (F2) formant as well as f0 (independently modified) was conducted. Results showed that f0 only influenced N1 latencies of vowels with low F1, while F1 influenced amplitudes and latencies for all vowels. The distance between F1 and F2 as well as F2 significantly correlated with N1 amplitudes, but not with N1 latencies. These results imply that early neural processing of vowels relies on higher spectral components (formants) rather than f0.

    Original publication: Frank, M., Muhlack, B., Zebe, F., & Scharinger, M. (2020). Contributions of pitch and spectral information to cortical vowel categorization. Journal of Phonetics, 79, 1-13.
    Link: Journal of Phonetics