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Frequency-Following Responses of Voice Pitch: A Comparison of Familiar vs. Stranger’s Voices in Normal-Hearing Adults. By Ashley Groeber Advisor: Dr. Fuh-Cherng Jeng. Introduction. Voice identification.
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Frequency-Following Responses of Voice Pitch: A Comparison of Familiar vs. Stranger’s Voices in Normal-Hearing Adults By Ashley Groeber Advisor: Dr. Fuh-Cherng Jeng
Voice identification • Voice pitch is an important auditory perception in the individual’s ability to identify the different pitch contours • Speaker Identification • Phonagnosia • Right hemisphere lesions • van Lancker & Canter, 1982 • Right hemisphere processes intonational contours and emotional tones of speech
Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Voices • Electrophysiological studies of the cortex show the identification of familiar vs. unfamiliar voices result in significantly more robust findings from the familiar voices when compared to unfamiliar voices. • Tanaka & Kudo, 2012 • Beauchemin et al., 2006 (Tanaka & Kudo, 2012)
Frequency Following Responses • FFR • Longer latency (6 msec) • Inferior colliculus • Accurately preserve pitch information from steady-state and time-variant speech sounds and complex sounds. (Krishnan et al., 2004)
Objectives • Examine the responses of the listener to their own voice and a stranger’s voice • Determine whether there is a stronger response to familiar voices or unfamiliar voices.
Hypothesis • When presented with a sample of your own voice and a stranger’s voice, your own voice will elicit a stronger frequency-following response than that of a stranger’s voice.
Subjects • 12 female native speakers of American English • mean age = 23.9 yr., SD = 2.54 • Normal hearing sensitivity • Thresholds ≤ 20 dB HL across all octave frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz
Auditory Stimuli • Voice sample of the vowel /i/ with a rising pitch • Four conditions • Participant’s own voice • Twostrangers’ voices • Control condition
Stimuli • Voice samples were recorded prior to testing • Participants were seated in a quiet room • Recorded with a Zoom H2n Handy Recorder • Participants were instructed to say the sentence “Are you happy?” with a drawn out /i/ sound. • Normalized • Duration normalized to 250 ms • Sampling rate: 40,000 samples/sec
FFR Recording • FFRs were recorded using three surface recording electrodes to record the participant‘s ability to perceive differences in voice pitch between familiar and unfamiliar voices. • One Channel Montage • Non inverting: High forehead (Fpz) • Inverting: Mastoid of the test ear (M2) • Ground: Low forehead • Impedances • < 3000 Ohms • Balanced within 1500 Ohm.
Procedure • Recordings were done in an acoustically and electrically treated sound booth • Participants were comfortably seated in a reclining chair and asked to relax throughout testing. • The stimuli were presented monaurally through a foam insert earphone (ER-2A) in the right ear at a 75 dB SPL.
Data Analysis • Offline analysis was completed with the use of MatLab, SigmaPlot, and SPSS • Four Objective Measures: • Tracking Accuracy: The accurateness of pitch encoding in the brainstem • Slope Error: How well the brain follows the overall shape of the pitch contour • Frequency Error: The accuracy of pitch tracking • Pitch Strength: The robustness of the response • A one-way ANOVA was conducted to determine significance between the experimental conditions. A p value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Mother’s Voice • Previous research has mainly focused on the subject’s mother’s voice • Turnure, 1971 • Beauchemin, 2010 • These studies indicate a relationship between the mother’s familiar voice and speaker identification.
Conclusion & Discussion
Conclusion • This study explored the brainstem responses to a familiar voice sample of the listener’s own voice or the listener’s mother’s voice and an unfamiliar voice sample of a stranger’s voice. • No significant differences were revealed in any of the measures, tracking accuracy, slope error, frequency error, or pitch strength, between FFRs of familiar voices and stranger voices.
Future Research • Could the mother’s voice produce a stronger response than the listener’s own voice? • Male participants
A Special Thank You to… • Dr. Jeng • Everyone the in the Auditory Evoked Potential lab • My professors and supervisors • My Classmates • Family/Friends
References • Beauchemin, M., De Beaumont, L., Vannasing, P., Turcotte, A., Arcand, C., Belin, P., & Lassonde, M. (2006). Electrophysiological markers of voice familiarity. European Journal Of Neuroscience, 23(11), 3081-3086. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04856.x • Beauchemin, M., Gonzalez-Frankenberger, B., Tremblay, J., Vannasing, P., Martinez-Montes, E., Belin, P., Beland, R., Francoeur, D., Carceller, A., Wallois, F., & Lassonde, M. (2010). Mother and Stranger: An Electrophysiological Study of Voice Processing in Newborns. Cerebral Cortex, 21(8), 1705-1711. • Van Dommelen, W. A. (1990). ACOUSTIC PARAMETERS IN HUMAN SPEAKER RECOGNITION. Language & Speech, 33(3), 259-272. • Jeng, F., Costilow, C. E., Stangherlin, D. P., & Chia-Der, l. (2011). Relative Power of Harmonics in Human Frequency Following Responses Associated with Voice Pitch in American and Chinese Adults. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 113(1), 67-86. • Jeng, F., Hu, J., Dickman, B., Montgomery-Reagan, K., Tong, M., Wu, G., & Lin, C. (2011). Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Frequency-Following Responses to Voice Pitch in American and Chinese Neonates and Adults. Ear and Hearing, 32(6), 699-707. • Krishnan, A., Xu, Y., Gandour, J. T., & Cariani, P. A. (2004). Human frequency-following response: representation of pitch contours in Chinese tones. Hearing Research, 1891-12. doi:10.1016/S0378-5955(03)00402-7 • Marsh, J.T., Brown, W.S., Smith, J.C. (1974). Differential brainstem pathways for the conduction of auditory frequency following responses. Electroencephalogr. Clin.Neurophysiol. 38, 415-422. • Sohmer, H., Pratt, H., & Kinarti, R. (1977). Sources of frequency following responses (FFR) in man. Electroencephalography And Clinical Neurophysiology, 42(5), 656-664. • Tanaka, Y., & Kudo, Y. (2012). Effects of familiar voices on brain activity. International Journal Of Nursing Practice, 1838-44. • Turnure, C. (1971). Response to voice of mother and stranger by babies in the first year. Developmental Psychology, 4(2), 182-190. doi:10.1037/h0030431 • Van Lancker, D., & Canter, G. (1982). Impairment of voice and face recognition in patients with hemispheric damage. Brain And Cognition, 1(2), 185-195.