The perception of voice quality: Multidimensional scaling evidence

Abstract

Forty‐four listeners aged 21–74 rated the similarity of all possible pairs of ten male voices. Three three‐way multidimensional scaling analyses were performed, including all listeners, listeners aged 21–44, and listeners aged 45 or older. A six‐dimensional solution was selected for the group data (r2 = 0.655); the dimensions were interpreted as “masculinity,” “sincerity,” “harshness,” “variability,” “breathiness,” and “liveliness.” Although significant differences in discrimination ability have been observed for the two age groups [Kreiman and Papcun, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 77, S9 (1985)], individual solutions provided no evidence for differences in perceptual strategies. The distance between each pair of stimuli on each dimension was then compared with the number of times those stimuli were confused. Differences on the first dimension correlated significantly with confusions (r = − 0.74), but no other single dimension was significantly associated with confusability. Moreover, the total distance be...