Intensity threshold: beyond pure tones
Keywords:
Perceptive threshold, Intensity, Perception test, Auditory discriminationAbstract
The objective of this study is to determine an intensity threshold based on perceptive discrimination in a manner similar to how the F0 threshold of 1.5-2 St was established (Rietveld & Gussenhoven, 1985; Toledo, 2000b; Pamies et al., 2002). In previous studies, an intensity threshold of 3 dB (v. gr. Dorta & Hernández, 2005:99-100) has been used, but it has not been proven that this is the appropriate threshold for the discrimination of normal speech sounds. Therefore, we have designed a discrimination-type perception test in order to determine the minimum intensity necessary to differentiate sounds in a formal context of controlled speech, as opposed to using pure tones as is typical of audiometry studies. The test was conducted on a set of 74 listeners or judges who compared and determined whether or not there were differences between proximal stimuli differentiated by their intensity levels. Our initial hypothesis suggests that the results of this perception test shall permit us to establish a threshold from 3-5 dB. The results and the statistical analysis of the data confirm our hypothesis, establishing the intensity threshold at 4 dB.
References
AMERICAN SPEECH, LANGUAGE AND HEARING ASSOCIATION (1988): Determining Threshold Level for Speech [Guidelines]. www.asha.org/policy [11/2/2016].
DORTA, J. & B. HERNÁNDEZ (2005): «Análisis prosódico de un corpus de habla experimental: interrogativas absolutas con expansión en el objeto vs. sin expansión», Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XIV, pp. 67-123.
DORTA, J. (ed.) (2013): Estudio comparativo preliminar de la entonación de Canarias, Cuba y Venezuela, Madrid / Santa Cruz de Tenerife, La Página Ediciones.
FERNÁNDEZ PLANAS, A. M. & E. MARTÍNEZ CELDRÁN (2003): «El tono fundamental y la duración: dos aspectos de la taxonomía prosódica en dos modalidades de habla (enunciativa e interrogativa) del español», Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XII, pp. 165-200.
JOHNSON, K. (2003): Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics, Cambridge, Blackwell Publishing.
MARRERO, V. (2008): «La fonética perceptiva: trascendencia lingüística de mecanismos neuropsicofisiológicos», Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XVII, pp. 207-245.
MARRERO, V. (2013): «Metodología de investigación en fonética perceptiva: posibles aportaciones para el estudio de la prosodia dialectal», Simposio Metodoloxía para o estudo perceptivo da variación prosódica dialectal, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela.
PAMIES, A.; A. M. FERNÁNDEZ PLANAS, E. MARTÍNEZ CELDRÁN, A. ORTEGA ESCANDELL & M. C. AMORÓS CÉSPEDES (2002): «Umbrales tonales en español peninsular», in J. Díaz García (ed.): Actas del II Congreso Nacional de Fonética Experimental , Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla, pp. 272-278.
PAMIES BERTRÁN, A. & A. M. FERNÁNDEZ PLANAS (2006): «La percepción de la duración vocálica en español», in J. Luque Durán (ed.): Actas del V Congreso Andaluz de Lingüística General. Homenaje al Profesor José Andrés de Molina Redondo, Granada, Método, pp. 501-512.
RAPHAEL, L. J.; G. J. BORDEN & K. S. HARRIS (2007): Speech Science Primer: Physiology, Acoustics, and Perception of Speech, Baltimore- Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
RIETVELD, T. & C. GUSSENHOVEN (1985): «On the relation between pitch excursion size and prominence», Journal of Phonetics, 13, pp. 299-308.
RODRIGUES DOS SANTOS, G.; A. SCHURT RAUBER, A. RATO, D. C. KLUGE & M. GUILHERME DE FIGUEIREDO (2013): «TP (v. 3.1): Una herramienta para experimentos de percepción», Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XXII, pp. 335-366.
ROSEANO, P. & A. M. FERNÁNDEZ PLANAS (2013): «Transcripció fonètica i fonológica de l’entonació: una proposta d’etiquetatge automàtic», Estudios de Fonética Experimental, XXII, pp. 275-332.
STEVENS, K. N. (2000): Acoustic Phonetics, Cambrigde, MIT Press.
TOLEDO, G. A. (1988): El Ritmo en el Español. Estudio Fonético con Base Computacional, Madrid, Gredos.
TOLEDO, G. A. (2000a): «Acentos en español: habla espontánea», Estudios Filológicos, 35, pp. 125-137.
TOLEDO, G. A. (2000b): «Taxonomía tonal en español», Language Design: Journal of Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics, 3, pp. 1-20.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
All articles published online by Estudios de Fonética Experimental are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED), unless otherwise noted. Estudios de Fonética Experimental is an open access journal. Estudios de Fonética Experimental is hosted by RCUB (Revistes Científiques de la Universitat de Barcelona), powered by Open Journal Systems (OJS) software. The copyright is not transferred to the journal: authors hold the copyright and publishing rights without restrictions. The author is free to use and distribute pre and post-prints versions of his/her article. However, preprint versions are regarded as a work-in-progress version used as internal communication with the authors, and we prefer to share postprint versions.
