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Effects Of Talker Variability On Spectral Contrast Effects., Asim Mohiuddin

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Spectral contrast effects are context-dependent effects that influence the way we perceive certain sounds. Evidence of these effects can be seen in experiments where a precursor sound (e.g. a sentence) is followed by a target vowel sound (like /ɪ/ as in "bit" or /ɛ/ as in "bet"). If the precursor's frequency was emphasized in areas more consistent with the frequency of /ɛ/, listeners tend to perceive the target sound to be the opposite i.e. /ɪ/. A recent study shows using sentence precursors from 200 different talkers diminishes these effects questioning previous claims that talker variability has no influence on spectral …