Listeners' identification of human-imitated animal sounds

Lass, Norman J.; Eastham, Sandra K.; Wright, Tammie L.; Hinzman, Audrey R.; Mills, Karen J.; Hefferin, Amy L.

doi:10.1121/1.2020938

Cited by 6 publications

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“…Therefore, a nonconventional imitation is only constrained by the vocal ability of the speakers and does not use symbolic conventions. For instance, Lass et al (1983) showed that human-imitated animal sounds were well recognized by listeners, even better than the actual animal sounds (Lass et al, 1982), yet the listeners did not have any problem discriminating between the two categories (Lass et al, 1984). This is probably close to what happens with Foley sound effects used in movies and video games: Recordings of the real events (e.g., footsteps, gunshots, etc.)…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

On the effectiveness of vocal imitations and verbal descriptions of sounds

Lemaître

Rocchesso

2014

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Describing unidentified sounds with words is a frustrating task and vocally imitating them is often a convenient way to address the issue. This article reports on a study that compared the effectiveness of vocal imitations and verbalizations to communicate different referent sounds. The stimuli included mechanical and synthesized sounds and were selected on the basis of participants' confidence in identifying the cause of the sounds, ranging from easy-to-identify to unidentifiable sounds. The study used a selection of vocal imitations and verbalizations deemed adequate descriptions of the referent sounds. These descriptions were used in a nine-alternative forced-choice experiment: Participants listened to a description and picked one sound from a list of nine possible referent sounds. Results showed that recognition based on verbalizations was maximally effective when the referent sounds were identifiable. Recognition accuracy with verbalizations dropped when identifiability of the sounds decreased. Conversely, recognition accuracy with vocal imitations did not depend on the identifiability of the referent sounds and was as high as with the best verbalizations. This shows that vocal imitations are an effective means of representing and communicating sounds and suggests that they could be used in a number of applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

On the effectiveness of vocal imitations and verbal descriptions of sounds

Lemaître

Rocchesso

2014

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…In Wilbur v. Hubbard (1861), a trial judge allowed the testimony of a witness who claimed that he could recognize a specific dog from its bark. The court ruled that "if a person can be identified through his/her voice alone, the same could be done with a barking dog" (cited in Tosi, 1979, p. 1; see also Lass et al, 1983. Although interesting, nonhuman speaker identification issues are beyond the scope of this article.…”

Section: Other-race and Accented Voicesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Earwitness speaker identification.

Yarmey

1995

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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The scientific basis of speaker identification by human listeners and its generalization to the procedures and practices of the police and to the decision making of the courts have been both neglected and misunderstood relative to that of face and photo identification. An overview of the perception of speech is presented, followed by a review of forensically relevant variables in voice identification (i.e., speaker, listener, situational, and procedural variables). Finally, suggestions for the proper procedures and conduction of voice lineups are proposed.The general belief that people can accurately identify others by hearing their voice is both ancient and contemporary. One historical example, which Tosi (1979) suggested is the equivalent in modern jurisprudence to "conspiring to falsely impersonate a person with the purpose of unduly acquiring the rights of primogeniture and dispossessing an individual of his rightful inheritance" (p. 1), is found in Genesis 27: 1-22. Isaac, father of Jacob and Esau, correctly recognized the voice of Jacob but lacked confidence in his decision. Trusting his touch and wishing to believe that his favorite son Esau was present, Isaac disregarded the voice information in this 1-person lineup and misidentified Jacob.

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“…Typical examples were based on the results of a study that asked individuals to describe and produce imitations of everyday sounds (Ballas, 1987). The rationale for this procedure is that descriptions and imitations should reflect mental stereotypes (Lass et al, 1983). The typical sounds included sounds of a lion, whistle, bell, water drip, foghorn, telephone, and auto horn.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Common factors in the identification of an assortment of brief everyday sounds.

Ballas¹

1993

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

212

227

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Acoustic, ecological, perceptual and cognitive factors that are common in the identification of 41 brief, varied sounds were evaluated. In Experiment 1, identification time and accuracy, causal uncertainty values, and spectral and temporal properties of the sounds were obtained. Experiment 2 was a survey to obtain ecological frequency counts. Experiment 3 solicited perceptual-cognitive ratings. Factor analyses of spectral parameters and perceptual-cognitive ratings were performed. Identification time and causal uncertainty are highly interrelated, and both are related to ecological frequency and the presence of harmonics and similar spectral bursts. Experiments 4 and 5 used a priming paradigm to verify correlational relationships between identification time and causal uncertainty and to assess the effect of sound typicality. Results support a hybrid approach for theories of everyday sound identification.

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Listeners' identification of human-imitated animal sounds

Abstract: Subjects exhibiting spontaneous acoustic emissions (SAEs) were presented with wideband noise in the ear contralateral to that in which their SAE was being recorded. The SAE magnitudes were monitored while the noise was incremented in 5-dB steps. Some SAE components were mar-

Cited by 6 publications

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On the effectiveness of vocal imitations and verbal descriptions of sounds

On the effectiveness of vocal imitations and verbal descriptions of sounds

Earwitness speaker identification.

Common factors in the identification of an assortment of brief everyday sounds.

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