Auditory models in isolated word recognition

A straightforward isolated word recognition system has been used to test different auditory models in acoustic front end processing. The models include BARK, PHON and SONE. The PHONTEMP model is based on PHON but also includes temporal forward masking. We also introduce a model, DOMIN, which is intended to measure the dominating frequency at each point along the ´basilar membrane.´ All the above models were derived from an FFT-analysis, and the FFT processing is also used as a reference model. One male and one female speaker were used to test the recognition performance of the different models on a difficult vocabulary consisting of 18 Swedish consonants and 9 Swedish vowels. The results indicate that the performance of the models decreases as they become more complex. The overall recognition accuracy of FFT is 97% while it is 87% for SONE. However, the DOMIN model which is sensitive to dominant frequencies (formants) performs very well for vowels.