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Time to judge sex of speaker: Effect of glottal-pulse rate and vocal-tract length

Smith, David R.R.

Authors

Profile image of David Smith

Dr David Smith D.R.Smith@hull.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer, Director of Studies for Psychology



Abstract

When listening to someone's voice: what stimulus duration is required to tell whether the person speaking is a man or a woman; what are the acoustic cues in speech that influence such judgements; and how does manipulations in these acoustic cues influence such judgements? The vowels of five men and five women were recorded and played at a number of brief durations. The vowels were either unmodified and thus differed in both glottal-pulse rate and vocal-tract length (Expt 1), or had their glottal-pulse rate modified to be the same (Expt 2), or had their simulated vocal-tract length modified to be the same (Expt 3). Listeners were required to indicate whether the vowels were spoken by a man or woman. Results show that correct speaker-sex judgement requires only brief duration stimuli (about 10 ms), and that the removal of either the glottal-pulse rate or the vocal-tract length cue leads to reduced performance in judging the sex of the original speaker.

Citation

Smith, D. R. (2010, August). Time to judge sex of speaker: Effect of glottal-pulse rate and vocal-tract length. Presented at 20th International Congress on Acoustics, ICA 2010, Sydney, Australia

Presentation Conference Type Conference Paper (Published)
Conference Name 20th International Congress on Acoustics, ICA 2010
Start Date Aug 23, 2010
End Date Aug 27, 2010
Acceptance Date Sep 1, 2010
Publication Date Dec 1, 2010
Volume 5
Pages 3673-3676
Book Title 20th International Congress on Acoustics 2010, ICA 2010 - Incorporating Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society
ISBN 9781617827457
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/405746
Publisher URL https://www.acoustics.asn.au/conference_proceedings/ICA2010/cdrom-ICA2010/index.htm