Effect of Consonant Duration Modifications on the Perception of Voicing and Place of Articulation in Syllable-initial Plosives in Noise

Abstract- The paper is an extension of the previous paper addressing the efficacy of temporal modifications to the clear speech advantage. This work focuses on effects of consonant duration modifications on the perception of production-based features such as voicing and place of articulation. Plosivevowels of English language were used as test stimuli. Stimuli were subjected to consonant-duration expansion, wherein burst duration, voice onset time, and formant transition segments were time-expanded independently by 50 and 100% of their original duration. The perception in noise tests were quantified in terms of information transmission analysis measures, in the presence of white noise-masker at three noise levels, 0 dB, +12 dB, and +6 dB. The burst duration modification by 50 % and formant transition duration modification by 100 % were found to improve perception of consonant place of articulation in simulated hearing loss, while voice onset time modifications was found to improve consonant voicing in noise-free situation only. Keywords- Consonant-duration modification, consonant voicing, place of articulation, information transmission analysis, white-noise masker, speech intelligibility I.