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. 2021 Jul 15:15:670192.
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.670192. eCollection 2021.

The Relative Weight of Temporal Envelope Cues in Different Frequency Regions for Mandarin Disyllabic Word Recognition

Zhong Zheng  1   2 , Keyi Li  3 , Yang Guo  4 , Xinrong Wang  1   2 , Lili Xiao  1   2 , Chengqi Liu  1   2 , Shouhuan He  5 , Gang Feng  6 , Yanmei Feng  1   2
Affiliations

The Relative Weight of Temporal Envelope Cues in Different Frequency Regions for Mandarin Disyllabic Word Recognition

Zhong Zheng et al. Front Neurosci. .

Abstract

Objectives: Acoustic temporal envelope (E) cues containing speech information are distributed across all frequency spectra. To provide a theoretical basis for the signal coding of hearing devices, we examined the relative weight of E cues in different frequency regions for Mandarin disyllabic word recognition in quiet.

Design: E cues were extracted from 30 continuous frequency bands within the range of 80 to 7,562 Hz using Hilbert decomposition and assigned to five frequency regions from low to high. Disyllabic word recognition of 20 normal-hearing participants were obtained using the E cues available in two, three, or four frequency regions. The relative weights of the five frequency regions were calculated using least-squares approach.

Results: Participants correctly identified 3.13-38.13%, 27.50-83.13%, or 75.00-93.13% of words when presented with two, three, or four frequency regions, respectively. Increasing the number of frequency region combinations improved recognition scores and decreased the magnitude of the differences in scores between combinations. This suggested a synergistic effect among E cues from different frequency regions. The mean weights of E cues of frequency regions 1-5 were 0.31, 0.19, 0.26, 0.22, and 0.02, respectively.

Conclusion: For Mandarin disyllabic words, E cues of frequency regions 1 (80-502 Hz) and 3 (1,022-1,913 Hz) contributed more to word recognition than other regions, while frequency region 5 (3,856-7,562) contributed little.

Keywords: Mandarin Chinese; disyllabic word; envelope cues; frequency region; relative weight.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Percent-correct scores for disyllabic word recognition using acoustic temporal envelope in two-frequency-region conditions.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Percent-correct scores for disyllabic word recognition using acoustic temporal envelope in three-frequency-region conditions.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Percent-correct scores for disyllabic word recognition using acoustic temporal envelope in four-frequency-region conditions.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
The relative weights of different frequency regions for Mandarin disyllabic word and sentence recognition using acoustic temporal envelope. The data for Mandarin sentence recognition was adopted from a previous study (Guo et al., 2017). The error bars represent standard errors. * Statistically significant (p < 0.05).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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