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Evaluation of two algorithms for detecting human frequency-following responses to voice pitch.
- Source :
-
International journal of audiology [Int J Audiol] 2011 Jan; Vol. 50 (1), pp. 14-26. Date of Electronic Publication: 2010 Nov 04. - Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Objective: Voice pitch carries important cues for speech perception in humans. Recent studies have shown the feasibility of recording the frequency-following response (FFR) to voice pitch in normal-hearing listeners. The presence of such a response, however, has been dependent on subjective interpretation of experimenters. The purpose of this study was to develop and test an automated procedure including a control-experimental protocol and response-threshold criteria suitable for extracting FFRs to voice pitch, and compare the results to human judgments.<br />Design: A set of four Mandarin tones (Tone 1 flat; Tone 2 rising; Tone 3 dipping; and Tone 4 falling) were prepared to reflect the four contrastive pitch contours. Two distinctive algorithms, short-term autocorrelation in the time domain and narrow-band spectrogram in the frequency domain, were used to estimate the Frequency Error, Slope Error, Tracking Accuracy, Pitch Strength and Pitch-Noise Ratio of the recordings from individual listeners as well as the power and false-positive rates of each algorithm.<br />Study Sample: Eleven native speakers (five males; age: mean ± SD = 31.4 ± 4.7 years) of Mandarin Chinese were recruited.<br />Results: The results demonstrated that both algorithms were suitable for extracting FFRs and the objective measures showed comparable results to human judgments.<br />Conclusions: The automated procedure used in this study, including the use of the control-experimental protocol and response thresholds used for each of the five objective indices, can be used for difficult-to-test patients and may prove to be useful as an assessment and diagnostic method in both clinical and basic research efforts.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1708-8186
- Volume :
- 50
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- International journal of audiology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 21047294
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2010.515620