A vocal placement model: I. Perceptual aspects.

A study of the perception of vocal placement was carried out to determine if speakers and listeners could agree about the speakers' intents in "placing" productions of vowels and sentences at different locations in the vocal tract. The model tested divided the vocal tract into five volumes from the laryngopharynx to the lips. The results showed that naive listeners, as a group, achieved significant concordance of agreement with the speakers' intents in placement. The speakers were much superior to the naive listeners in a delayed-judgement self-listening task. It was concluded that the vocal tract model has perceptual validity.