Dynamic pitch and pitch range interact in distortions of perceived duration of American English speech tokens

Previous research showed that pitch factors can distort perceived duration: tokens with dynamic or higher f0 tend to be perceived as longer than comparable level-f0 or lower-f0 tokens, and silent intervals bounded by tokens of widely differing pitch are heard as longer than those bounded by tokens closer in pitch (the kappa effect). Fourteen subjects were asked to judge which of two exemplars of a spoken word sounded longer. All tokens were created from the same base file with manipulations of objective duration, f0 contour (plateaux vs. rises of different slopes) and pitch range. Results show that pitch range relation between the two exemplars was a stronger predictor of perceived duration distortion than f0 contour. In addition to previously demonstrated effects of f0 height (Yu, 2010), greater f0 discontinuity between tokens increases the likelihood that the first token of a pair will be judged as longer, suggesting that some previous findings showing the effects of dynamic pitch on perceived duration ...