Region, gender, and vowel quality: A word to the wise hearing scientist

Abstract

Sociophonetic research has established effects of regional accent and gender on spoken vowels. Many gender differences are due to sociolinguistic factors and thus vary by region. The implications for researchers and clinicians are important: gender variation must be controlled for according to the region of the listener and talker population. Moreover, speech perception stimuli used in research and in clinical applications have limited regional application. This poster illustrates these factors using the Pacific Northwest regional accent. The data, collected for a previous study on hearing aid processing, consist of three repetitions of eight vowels produced in real-word /h—d/ (or /—d/) contexts by six males and six females ranging in age from 19 to 60. Formants were measured using an LPC with an accompanying FFT and spectrogram for verification. The results revealed vowel-specific differences in the male and female speech over and above those typically associated with physiologic predictions, and different again from those observed in past studies from different regions. Taken as a whole, these data suggest that speech and hearing researchers should take care in selecting stimuli for general-use speech perception tests. [Work supported by NIDCD training grant (♯DC00033) and NIH RO1 (1 RO1 DC006014).]