Abstract: Three experiments were conducted to investigate the mechanisms of noise segregation from vowel and complex when one or more harmonics were mistuned.Experiment one dealt with the number of mistuned harmonics as a factor affecting the harmonic mistuned effect(HME). The position effect of HME was concerned in experiment two. The last experiment considered the relationship between HME and phase of the mistuned harmonic. The results indicated that(1) the HME was much greater when more than two harmonics were mistuned than when only one harmonic was mistuned;(2)harmonic position played an important role in HME, the higher the harmonic was, the less HME was found for the complex, and the closer to formant the harmonic stood, the more significant HME existed; and(3) phase did not significantly affect the HME, however, its indirect contribution was observed, which was related to the starting amplitude of a harmonic.

Key words: segregation, vowel, harmonic mistuning, noise, phase