Vowel generalization and its relation to adaptation during perturbations of auditory feedback

Repeated perturbations of auditory feedback during vowel production elicit changes not only in the production of the perturbed vowel (adaptation) but also in the production of nearby vowels that were not perturbed (generalization). The finding that adaptation generalizes to other, non-perturbed vowels suggest that sensorimotor representations for vowels are not independent; instead the goals for producing any one vowel may depend in part on the goals for other vowels. The present study investigated the dependence or independence of vowel representations by evaluating adaptation and generalization in two groups of speakers exposed to auditory perturbations of their first formant (F1) during different vowels. The speakers in both groups who adapted to the perturbation exhibited generalization in two non-perturbed vowels that were produced under masking noise. Correlation testing was performed to evaluate the relations between adaptation and generalization as well as between the generalization in the two non-perturbed vowels. These tests identified significant coupling between the F1 changes of adjacent vowels but not non-adjacent vowels. The pattern of correlation findings indicates that generalization was due in part to feedforward representations that are partly shared across adjacent vowels, possibly to maintain their acoustic contrast.

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