Some Temporal Relationships between Speech and Hearing

This study was designed to explore whether certain temporal patterns of speech are related to temporal aspects of hearing. The results of the study were obtained by correlating the tone-burst durations most accurately matched at each of three frequencies and the critical fusion frequency with three measures of speech. These measures were average phonation time, average pause time and the number of pauses per second. Twenty-one male and 21 female persons with normal hearing served as subjects. The results indicate that significant relationships exist between the average pause time and critical fusion frequency and tone-burst duration most accurately matched at 150 Hz. The same relationships existed for the average phonation time. These relationships would indicate a possible dependency of speech timing upon certain primitive aspects of temporal processing by the auditory system.