Glossary / Lexicon

Formant is defined as a concentrated band of energy found in the sound spectrograms of phonemes.

In psychology, a formant refers to a peak in the frequency spectrum of a sound signal, which is produced by the resonance of the vocal tract. Formants are important for speech perception and are used to distinguish different vowels and consonants.

For example, the vowel sound "ah" has a low-frequency first formant and a high-frequency second formant, while the vowel sound "ee" has a high-frequency first formant and a higher-frequency second formant. By analyzing the formants in speech signals, researchers can gain insights into the acoustic properties of speech sounds and how they are perceived by listeners.

Formant analysis has applications in a variety of fields, including speech recognition technology, forensic linguistics, and clinical assessment of speech disorders.