Identification of speaker characteristics by listener groups ofdifferent ages and expertise

Abstract

In this study we investigated to what extent listeners can identify some unknown speakers' characteristics by listening only to their voice recordings (physical characteristics, accent/dialect, smoking habits, level of education, personality, outer appearance). Several listener groups of different ages and expertise took part. The aim of the study was to compare the voice perception of children/adolescents and adults as well as naive listeners and phonetically trained listeners. A total of 197 subjects, divided into 4groups (primary school pupils, secondary school pupils, university students, specialists in phoniatrics and pediatric audiology), listened to voice recordings of 23 speakers. They were instructed to fill in a questionnaire that asked for the speakers' characteristics. With regard to the individual characteristics, the listeners achieved variable results and identified the speakers' gender, age, foreign accents and partly level of education fairly accurate, while they were less efficient judging other categories such as height, body mass index, dialects and smoking habits.The primary school listeners achieved significantly less correct answers in all but 2 categories than each of the other listener groups; however, they already made some correct judgments above chance levels. The results achieved by the specialists and students did not differ significantly in any category. It has been confirmed that voice perception or the required skills are age dependent. The expert listeners did not perform significantly better than the naive listeners.