Les trajectoires formantiques respectant les lois de la physique contribuent-elles à une meilleure perception de la parole ?

International audiencePhysical properties of speech articulators contribute to shape articulatory and formant trajectories. This study aims at evaluating the role of this shaping in speech perception. We conducted perception tests of synthetic stimuli generated with speech production models accounting for different degrees of physical complexity. Our results do not provide any support to the hypothesis that the degree of physical realism in the models influences the perception of naturalness. However for degraded speech (silent center speech), significant differences are observed

Does physical realism of articulatory modelin improve the perception of synthetic speech?

International audienceThis article presents the first step in a process to evaluate the potential impact of the physical properties of the articulators on speech perception. The underlying hypothesis is that articulatory biomechanics contribute to shape articulatory and formant trajectories. These in turn become patterns available for speech perception. Perceptual tests on synthetic silent center stimuli were run which are inspired from former studies of Strange and colleagues. Stimuli were generated with a unique timing with different models incorporating various degrees of physical realism. Our results show that silent center stimuli generated with a realistic biomechanical model achieve higher identification scores than stimuli from less realistic, kinematic, models, when only fast reaction times of the listeners are considered, in order to make sure that only low-level cognitive processings are involved