Acoustic voice variation within and between speakers

Lee, Yoonjeong; Keating, Patricia; Kreiman, Jody

doi:10.1121/1.5125134

Cited by 51 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…It is well known that speech spectra carry information of both the larynx (voice source) and the vocal tract (filter) 81 and reflect gender characteristics 31 . Apart from common spectral features across speakers 82 , there may also be variabilities in characteristics of the speech spectrum across speakers. Between-speaker variability has been observed in source spectral shape and spectral noise in both genders, F3 and F4 and formant dispersion in female voices; and spectral slope in the higher frequencies (from the fourth harmonic to the harmonic closest to 2 kHz and from the harmonic closest to 2 kHz to the harmonic closest to 5 kHz) for male voices 82 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic voice characteristics with and without wearing a facemask

Nguyên

McCabe

Thomas

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Facemasks are essential for healthcare workers but characteristics of the voice whilst wearing this personal protective equipment are not well understood. In the present study, we compared acoustic voice measures in recordings of sixteen adults producing standardised vocal tasks with and without wearing either a surgical mask or a KN95 mask. Data were analysed for mean spectral levels at 0–1 kHz and 1–8 kHz regions, an energy ratio between 0–1 and 1–8 kHz (LH1000), harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS), and vocal intensity. In connected speech there was significant attenuation of mean spectral level at 1–8 kHz region and there was no significant change in this measure at 0–1 kHz. Mean spectral levels of vowel did not change significantly in mask-wearing conditions. LH1000 for connected speech significantly increased whilst wearing either a surgical mask or KN95 mask but no significant change in this measure was found for vowel. HNR was higher in the mask-wearing conditions than the no-mask condition. CPPS and vocal intensity did not change in mask-wearing conditions. These findings implied an attenuation effects of wearing these types of masks on the voice spectra with surgical mask showing less impact than the KN95.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic voice characteristics with and without wearing a facemask

Nguyên

McCabe

Thomas

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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“…In the same way, the sound of a familiar voice will vary depending on a comparably wide range of factors involving local acoustics, the prevailing context (e.g. a job interview vs. an informal conversation), the person's emotional state, their health, whether they are talking, joking, asking questions or making nonverbal sounds, and so on [3,67,68]. Recent work shows that these differences in the sound of the same voice work in much the same way as differences in the appearance of the same face to drive a corresponding form of organisation that can achieve recognition of familiar individuals across widely differing examples of the same voice [60,61,68].…”

Section: Functional Demands Of Face and Voice Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…a job interview vs. an informal conversation), the person's emotional state, their health, whether they are talking, joking, asking questions or making nonverbal sounds, and so on [3,67,68]. Recent work shows that these differences in the sound of the same voice work in much the same way as differences in the appearance of the same face to drive a corresponding form of organisation that can achieve recognition of familiar individuals across widely differing examples of the same voice [60,61,68]. For this reason, recognition of familiar faces or familiar voices by most neurologically normal individuals far outstrips recognition of unfamiliar faces and voices [39,40,60], and impairments in recognition of familiar faces or voices can occur even in the context of relatively preserved recognition or matching of their unfamiliar counterparts [24,45,47].…”

Section: Functional Demands Of Face and Voice Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face and Voice Perception: Understanding Commonalities and Differences

Young

Frühholz

Schweinberger

2020

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

130

140

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Faces and voices are of high importance in interpersonal communication, and there are notable parallels between face and voice perception. However, these parallels do not sit entirely comfortably with the full range of available evidence. This review evaluates parallels between the functional and neural organisation of face and voice perception, whilst locating these in the context of ways in which faces and voices also differ. It takes the discussion to the next level by asking why these commonalities and differences exist. A novel synthesis is offered, grounded in the interaction between intrinsic characteristics of faces and voices and the demands of everyday life, showing how the pattern of findings reflects a system that can respond optimally to different everyday demands. Highlights• Similarities in functional organisation have led to the proposal of parallel, largely independent processing streams for voices and faces.Linked to this conception is the idea that the voice can be considered to be a kind of 'auditory face'.• However, neuroimaging studies show a strong contribution of multimodal regions that respond both to voices and to faces. Closer examination of neuropsychological and behavioural studies supports this form of organisation.• The contributions of differences between how relatively invariant information (such as a person's identity) and more rapidly changing information (such as their emotional state) must be represented need to be carefully considered.• Understanding the everyday demands of different tasks involving voice and face perception offers a resolution in which these serve as strong drivers of the optimal functional and neural organisation. Young, Frühholz and Schweinberger (cont'd) 3 Understanding face and voice perception Human communication involves complex patterns of signals originating primarily from the face, voice, and body [1]. Whilst much of this communication takes the form of propositional speech, faces and voices can also convey common forms of information concerning a person's gender, age, identity, health and emotional state, and they create impressions of warmth, competence and other social traits [2,3]. Much modern research has therefore focussed on communication from the face and voice [4-9]. This review aims to strengthen theoretical approaches to key properties of face and voice perception. It offers a synthesis of existing evidence based on evaluating functional perspectives (see Glossary) and neural perspectives in light of the overarching background of what can be communicated through faces and voices, the different contingencies thiscreates, the demands of everyday life, and the ways in which these act as determinants of a communicative system that has to balance the needs of the sender and recipient.

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“…A possible limitation of our work is that we used male voice for the auditive and dual modalities. Sex-differences could be related to this, however, voice acoustics differences have been reported to be quite similar among individuals and the general population (Lee et al, 2019). In addition, although differences in brain activity in response to female/male voices have been reported (Lattner et al, 2005), no evidence of differences among genders in auditive language perception with male or female voices have been reported (Mullennix et al, 1995;Lattner et al, 2005).…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Boys-Specific Text-Comprehension Enhancement With Dual Visual-Auditory Text Presentation Among 12–14 Years-Old Students

et al. 2021

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Quality of language comprehension determines performance in all kinds of activities including academics. Processing of words initially develops as auditory, and gradually extends to visual as children learn to read. School failure is highly related to listening and reading comprehension problems. In this study we analyzed sex-differences in comprehension of texts in Spanish (standardized reading test PROLEC-R) in three modalities (visual, auditory, and both simultaneously: dual-modality) presented to 12–14-years old students, native in Spanish. We controlled relevant cognitive variables such as attention (d2), phonological and semantic fluency (FAS) and speed of processing (WISC subtest Coding). Girls’ comprehension was similar in the three modalities of presentation, however boys were importantly benefited by dual-modality as compared to boys exposed only to visual or auditory text presentation. With respect to the relation of text comprehension and school performance, students with low grades in Spanish showed low auditory comprehension. Interestingly, visual and dual modalities preserved comprehension levels in these low skilled students. Our results suggest that the use of visual-text support during auditory language presentation could be beneficial for low school performance students, especially boys, and encourage future research to evaluate the implementation in classes of the rapidly developing technology of simultaneous speech transcription, that could be, in addition, beneficial to non-native students, especially those recently incorporated into school or newly arrived in a country from abroad.

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Acoustic voice variation within and between speakers

Cited by 51 publications

References 67 publications

Acoustic voice characteristics with and without wearing a facemask

Acoustic voice characteristics with and without wearing a facemask

Face and Voice Perception: Understanding Commonalities and Differences

Boys-Specific Text-Comprehension Enhancement With Dual Visual-Auditory Text Presentation Among 12–14 Years-Old Students

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