Understanding how sounds are perceived and interpreted is an important challenge for researchers dealing with auditory perception. The ecological approach to perception suggests that the salient perceptual information that enables an auditor to recognize events through sounds is contained in specific structures called invariants. Identifying such invariants is of interest from a fundamental point of view to better understand auditory perception and it is also useful to include perceptual considerations to model and control sounds. Among the different approaches used to identify perceptually relevant sound structures, vocal imitations are believed to bring a fresh perspective to the field. The main goal of this paper is to better understand how invariants are transmitted through vocal imitations. A sound corpus containing different types of known invariants obtained from an existing synthesizer was established. Participants took part in a test where they were asked to imitate the sound corpus. A continuous and sparse model adapted to the specificities of the vocal imitations was then developed and used to analyze the imitations. Results show that participants were able to highlight salient elements of the sounds that partially correspond to the invariants used in the sound corpus. This study also confirms that vocal imitations reveal how these invariants are transmitted through perception and offers promising perspectives on auditory investigations.

中文翻译：

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通过模仿声音来探索声音感知。

了解声音的感知和解释方式是研究听觉感知的重要挑战。生态感知方法表明，使审计师能够通过声音识别事件的显着感知信息包含在称为不变式的特定结构中。从基本的观点出发，识别这样的不变量是更好地理解听觉感知的兴趣所在，并且包括对模型和控制声音进行感知的考虑也很有用。在用于识别与听觉相关的声音结构的不同方法中，声音模仿被认为为该领域带来了新的视角。本文的主要目的是更好地理解不变性是如何通过声音模仿来传递的。建立了一个声音语料库，其中包含从现有合成器获得的不同类型的已知不变量。参加测试的参与者被要求模仿声音的语料。然后，建立了适合于人声模仿特性的连续且稀疏的模型，并将其用于分析模仿。结果表明，参与者能够突出显示声音中与声音语料库中使用的不变量部分相对应的显着元素。这项研究还证实，声模仿揭示了这些不变量如何通过感知传播，并为听觉研究提供了有希望的观点。然后，开发了一种适用于人声模仿特性的连续且稀疏的模型，并将其用于分析模仿。结果表明，参与者能够突出显示与声音语料库中使用的不变量部分相对应的声音的显着元素。这项研究还证实，声音模仿揭示了这些不变量如何通过感知传播，并为听觉研究提供了有希望的观点。然后，开发了一种适用于人声模仿特性的连续且稀疏的模型，并将其用于分析模仿。结果表明，参与者能够突出显示声音中与声音语料库中使用的不变量部分相对应的显着元素。这项研究还证实，声音模仿揭示了这些不变量如何通过感知传播，并为听觉研究提供了有希望的观点。