Gender as a mediator in the perception of speech rate

Abstract

The perception of speech rate was examined as a function of the gender of the speakers and listeners and the speech rate of the listeners. In the first experiment, the stimuli were moderately paced speech samples from women, with males and females as listeners. The results indicated that although the speech rates of the female listeners were positively related to perceived speech rate, the rates of the male listeners were negatively related. In the second experiment, the stimuli were comparably paced samples of male and female speech, again with men and women as the listeners. The results indicated that the women judged the speech rates of all the speakers to be faster than did the men, and that all the listeners believed that the men talked faster than the women. The results of both studies suggest that gender plays an influential role in the perception of speech rate.