Categorization of a sibilant+vowel continuum in Japanese, Mandarin, and English

A continuum of 168 synthetic sibilant+vowel stimuli was categorized by listeners of three languages (Japanese, Mandarin, and English). The contoid portion of each stimulus consisted of a 190‐ms high‐pass filtered white noise whose cutoff frequency varied from 1800 to 3800 Hz in 7 steps. (Signals were low‐pass filtered at 8500 Hz before resampling to 22.05 kHz for playback.) Each (cascade formant) vocoid portion was 210 ms in duration varying in three F1 levels (from 300 to 430 Hz) crossed with four F2 levels (from 850 to 2100 Hz, with fixed F3 through F5). Each of the 84 noise+vocoid patterns was combined with two different F2 transition patterns, designed to slightly favor more alveolar or more palatal fricative responses. Appropriate response sets were determined in pilot studies for each language by native speakers on the research team. Corresponding software was designed to allow computer‐controlled categorization. Data collection for 9 Japanese, 20 Mandarin, and 4 English listeners is complete (more ...