The Effect of Fundamental Frequency on Phonetic Convergence

Abstract

This paper examines the importance of fundamental frequency (F0) in the process of phonetic convergence within an immediate-repetition or “shadowing” task. Previous research has suggested that F0 facilitates the transmission of social information that individuals can use to establish their social orientation within an interaction (Gregory et al., 1991, 1996, 2001). Social theories of accommodation assert that this process mediates a subconscious decision to converge (imitate) or diverge in speech, and to what extent. If this is true, having participants shadow a talker whose speech is high-pass filtered should demonstrate that they imitate less than participants who shadowed the talker’s full range of speech. Additionally, this project will review social and automatic theories of convergence, and reinforce the need for a new, integrative model that allows social processes to intervene in an exemplar-based perception-production link.