On the perception of voicing for plosives in noise

Previous research has shown that the VOT and first formant transition are primary perceptual cues for the voicing distinction for syllable‐initial plosives (SIP) in quiet environments. This study seeks to determine which cues are important for the perception of voicing for SIP in the presence of noise. Stimuli for the perceptual experiments consisted of naturally spoken CV syllables (six plosives in three vowel contexts) in varying levels of additive white Gaussian noise. In each experiment, plosives which share the same place of articulation (e.g., /p, b/) were presented to subjects in identification tasks. For each voiced/voiceless pair, a threshold SNR value was calculated. It was found that the perception of voicing has a strong dependence on vowel context with /Ca/ syllables being significantly better discriminated than /Ci/ and /Cu/ syllables. In addition, labials consistently had a higher threshold SNR (or more easily confusable) than alveolars and velars. Threshold SNR values were then correlated ...