Car-talk: Location-specific speech production and perception

Abstract

Some locations are probabilistically associated with certain types of speech. Most speech that is encountered in a car, for example, will have Lombard-like characteristics as a result of having been produced in the context of car noise. We examine the hypothesis that the association between cars and Lombard speech will trigger Lombard-like speaking and listening behaviour when a person is physically present in a car, even in the absence of noise. Production and perception tasks were conducted, in noise and in quiet, in both a lab and a parked car. The results show that speech produced in a quiet car resembles speech produced in the context of car noise. Additionally, we find tentative evidence indicating that listeners in a quiet car adjust their vowel boundaries in a manner that suggests that they interpreted the speech as though it were Lombard speech.