心理物理実験によるタクタイル・ボコーダーの基礎的研究

抄録

The functional properties of vibratory sense of skin were studied for a deaf aid by means of psychophysical experiments with respects to the two-point threshold, intensity difference limen and masking. From the experiments, both two-point threshold and difference limen were minimum at the finger tip. The auditory masking characteristics by FM tone and the tactile masking by scanning vibratory stimulation were similar to each other. Based on The above results, a small tactile vocoder, in which the vibration pattern was produced by a 16x3 array stimulators of 200Hz that can be fitted on a single finger tip, was designed using highly efficient piezoelectric vibrators. After 20 to 30 minute training time, the rate of correct response was 91% in the articulation test for vowels and 66% for monosyllables /ku/, /su/, /nu/, /hu/, /ru/.