Band importance functions for certain consonant features

Miller and Nicely (1955) demonstrated that there are differences in the most important frequency regions for the recognition of different linguistic features. The present study was designed to determine the relative importance of each one-third octave band between 178 and 8912 Hz for each of several consonant features. The test instrument was the diagnostic rhyme test (DRT) of Voiers, Cohen, and Mickunas (1965): The analytical methods of French and Steinberg (1947) were used to derive band-importance functions for the DRT as a whole and for each of the features, voicing, nasality, sustention, sibilation, graveness, and compactness. The one-third octave band importance weights for the DRT and the various features were found to be quite different from each other and from those reported earlier for nonsense syllables (ANSI S.3.5-1969; Kryter, 1962). Curves describing the importance per Hertz and the cumulative band importance will be presented. [Work supported by NIH grant ♯ NS 15996.]