Beschreibung:
<jats:p>The notion of perceptual categories for intonation contour has particular attractions in speech recognition and speech synthesis. According to the logic of categorical perception, tonetic category boundaries should correspond to discrimination peaks. Can such peaks be found, and if so, is their basis speech-specific or psychoacoustic? A series of ABX experiments will be reported that examine discriminability along stimulus continua formed by one- and two-section logarithmic f0 slopes, imposed on both synthetic speech, and complex tone stimuli. A single discrimination peak was found, for both speech and tone stimuli, in the region of a flat f0 slope. This discrimination peak corresponds to a putative category boundary which could distinguish rise from fall contours, on a one-section slope, and distinguish fall from fall-rise contours, on a two-section slope. Because the same discrimination peak is evident for speech and non-speech stimuli, the basis of the category boundary effect can be regarded as psychoacoustic.</jats:p>