ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Most studies determining speakers' perceived gender as binarily female or male are reliant on F0 perception, although other vocal parameters may also contribute to the perception of gender. The current study focused on the impact of breathiness on the perception of speakers' gender as a biological variable (feminine or masculine). METHODS: n = 31 normal hearing, native English speakers, 18 female, 13 male, mean age 23 (SD = 3.54), were auditorily and visually trained in and then took part in a categorical perception task. A continuum of nine samples of the word "hello", was created in an airway modulation model of speech and voice production. Resting vocal fold length, resting vocal fold thickness, F0, and vocal tract length were fixed. Glottal width at the vocal process, posterior glottal gap, and bronchial pressure were continually modified for all stimuli. Each stimulus was randomly presented 30 times within each of the five blocks (150 presentations in total). Participants rated stimuli as binarily female or male. RESULTS: Showed a sigmoidal shift in breathiness along the continuum between perceived feminine or masculine voicing. This shift was evident at stimuli four and five, indicating a nonlinear, discrete perception of breathiness among participants. Response times were also significantly slower in these two stimuli, suggesting a categorical perception of breathiness among participants. CONCLUSION: Breathiness created by the change in glottal width of at least 0.21 cm may influence the perception of a speaker's perceived gender.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Voice and speech are rich with information about a speaker's personality and other features of identity. This study seeks to determine the extent to which listeners agree about speakers' social, physical, and personality attributes. METHOD: Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, listeners rated a group of speakers who were unbalanced for sex and personality traits. The second experiment elaborated on the first by ensuring the speaker set was balanced for sex and personality traits. Both experiments played standard speech samples from speakers who provided personality information via the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire-Brief Form. Groups of listeners rated each speaker on the same personality traits and other features of identity. Responses were analyzed for listener agreement. RESULTS: For both experiments, listeners showed consistently high levels of agreement on the personality attributes of a speaker. For certain speakers, listener agreement on some personality traits was as high as 92% and 97% in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Furthermore, a range of agreement across personality subscales was observed across speakers such that some were agreed-upon across all personality ratings and others were agreed-upon only for a few personality traits. CONCLUSIONS: When it comes to judging personality traits and other features of identity, most listeners might not be "correct" about speakers' traits and attributes, but they broadly agree about how the listener sounds. Some speakers send more salient voice and speech cues that drive agreement about their personality, whereas others speak in a manner that precludes consensus. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16906990.
