Perception of noise-vocoded sine-wave speech of Japanese pitch-accent words.

The present study examined whether the identification accuracy of Japanese pitch-accent words increased after the sine-wave speech underwent noise vocoding, which eliminates the quasi-periodicity of the sine-wave speech. The results demonstrated that Japanese listeners were better at discriminating sine-wave speech than noise-vocoded sine-wave speech, with no significant difference in identification between the two conditions. They identify sine-wave pitch-accent words to some extent using acoustic cues other than the pitch accent. The noise vocoder used in the present study might not have been substantially effective for Japanese listeners to show a significant difference in the identification between the two conditions.