Acoustic, semantic and phonetic influences in spoken warning signal words

Abstract

AbstractThree experiments are reported which explore the relationship between semantic, acoustic and phonetic variables in the judgement of eight warning signal words. Experiment 1 shows that listeners can distinguish very clearly between urgent and non‐urgent versions of the words when spoken by real speakers, and that some signal words such as ‘deadly’ and ‘danger’ score more highly than words such as ‘attention’ and ‘don't’. It also shows that the three dimensions of perceived urgency, appropriateness and believability of these words are highly correlated. Experiment 2 replicates Experiment 1 using synthesized voices where acoustic variables are controlled. The semantic effects are replicated, and to some extent appropriateness and believability are found to function differently from that of perceived urgency. Experiment 3 compares the same set of eight signal words with a set of phonetically similar neutral words, showing that warning signal words are rated significantly higher, and largely maintain their previous rank ordering. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.