On the relationship between vocal aesthetics and speech perception.

Abstract

This study reports data from four experiments exploring the interplay of meta-linguistic analyzes and lower level tasks with the goal of understanding how judgments of vocal aesthetics and voice typicality affect voice and phoneme processing. In the first, speakers of west coast North American English rated the attractiveness of 60 American English voices. Results from this experiment were compared against the following ones. In the second experiment listeners were asked to rate the typicality of each voice for its sex. Ratings for both showed a strong correlation, suggesting that vocal attractiveness and voice typicality are related. In the next experiment listeners were asked to quickly classify the voices as male or female. Faster reaction times correlated with judgments of higher typicality, but not with attractiveness. Finally a group of listeners were asked to classify the vowels produced by the voices. Here a correlation was found with both rating tasks such that listeners were faster at vowel classification for both the more attractive voices and the more typical ones. Moreover, a correlation was found between both online tasks such that voices that listeners classified quickly by sex were also classified quickly by vowel.