Visual Feedback of Intonation Ii: Feedback Delay and Quality of Feedback

Abstract

In two experiments we investigated qualitative aspects of pitch visualizers: feedback delay, i.e. the time-pan between the production of an utterance and the plotting of its fundamental-frequency contour, and the quality of the contours with speech material that differed in intonation pattern and in the number of unvoiced segments. The results showed that feedback delay is not a critical factor when using a pitch visualizer for intonation teaching, but that the nature of the speech material - and probably also the voice quality of the speaker who produces the utterances - does dramatically affect the quality of the visual feedback. Both findings have immediate consequences for the design and the application of pitch visualizers.