A cross-language familiar talker advantage

Abstract

Previous research has shown that familiar talkers are more intelligible than unfamiliar talkers. In the current study, we tested the source of this familiar talker advantage by manipulating the type of talker information available to listeners. Two groups of native English listeners were familiarized with the voices of five German-English bilingual talkers; one group learned the voices from German stimuli and the other from English stimuli. Thus, English-trained listeners had access to both language-independent and English-specific talker information, while German-trained listeners had access to language-independent and German-specific talker information. After three days of voice learning, all listeners performed a word recognition task in English. Consistent with previous findings, English-trained listeners found the speech of familiar talkers to be more intelligible than unfamiliar talkers, as measured by whole words and phonemes correct. In contrast, German-trained listeners showed no familiar talker advantage, suggesting that listeners must have knowledge of talker-specific, linguistically relevant information to elicit the familiar talker advantage and that knowledge of language-independent talker information - such as size and shape of the vocal tract - does not facilitate speech perception.