The independent contribution of voice onset time to perceptual metrics of convergence.

Jessamyn Schertz,Melissa Paquette-Smith,Elizabeth K Johnson

doi:10.1121/10.0004373

Jessamyn Schertz, Melissa Paquette-Smith + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0004373

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Abstract

This work explores the relationship between phonetic and perceptual metrics for convergence in shadowed productions by adults and 6-year-old children by isolating the role of voice onset time (VOT) in listeners' similarity judgments. Results show a small but independent role for VOT: listeners were less likely to identify shadowed tokens as more similar to the model when natural VOT convergence present in the stimulus set had been artificially removed (experiments 1 and 2). However, VOT equivalence alone, when accompanied by naturally occurring variation along other dimensions, was not sufficient to drive listeners' judgments of similarity (experiment 3).

Highlights

When repeating after, or “shadowing” another talker, speakers tend to approximate the characteristics of the speech of the “model” talker, a phenomenon that appears in conversational interaction (Pardo et al, 2017).1 While there appears to be an automatic component to convergence (Goldinger, 1998), it is linguistically and socially selective, with different linguistic features and different pairs of talkers eliciting different amounts of convergence (Clopper and Dossey, 2020)
Convergence has typically been measured in two general ways: acoustic metrics examine how speakers adjust their productions along measurable acoustic dimensions, while perceptual measures are based on listeners’ holistic judgments of similarity between the shadower and the model talker, incorporating multiple dimensions simultaneously
Previous work has demonstrated that acoustic and perceptual metrics of convergence are related and that listeners’ perceptions of similarity are correlated with similarity in specific acoustic features (e.g., Pardo et al (2017) and references therein), but we are not aware of work testing the independent contribution of a single dimension to perceptual similarity

Summary

Introduction

“shadowing” another talker, speakers tend to approximate the characteristics of the speech of the “model” talker, a phenomenon that appears in conversational interaction (Pardo et al, 2017). While there appears to be an automatic component to convergence (Goldinger, 1998), it is linguistically and socially selective, with different linguistic features and different pairs of talkers eliciting different amounts of convergence (Clopper and Dossey, 2020). Convergence has typically been measured in two general ways: acoustic metrics examine how speakers adjust their productions along measurable acoustic dimensions, while perceptual measures are based on listeners’ holistic judgments of similarity between the shadower and the model talker, incorporating multiple dimensions simultaneously. The extent of acoustic convergence was predictive of listeners’ responses [see Pardo et al (2013) and Walker and Campbell-Kibler (2015)] These studies provide evidence that listeners are sensitive to similarity along these acoustic dimensions and provide some support for the idea that similarity judgments can be used as a global metric to assess convergence. If perceptual measures are used to assess convergence, it is important to have a thorough understanding of which dimensions are used by listeners in assessing similarity and whether this differs depending on the talker

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