Voice discrimination by two listener populations
Jody E. Kreiman, George J. Papcun · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1985
The ability of two groups of listeners (over and under 45 years of age) to discriminate among the voices often young male Southern Californians was examined with a paired-comparison task. Listeners heard both orders of all possible pairs of voices, plus 30 pairs where voices were the same. They indicated for each pair whether the voices were the same or different and how sure they were of their response. Discrimination scores across groups ranged from nearly perfect (Az = 0.97) to near chance (Az = 0.69). Overall, the older group of listeners performed significantly less well than did the younger group: They made fewer correct identifications (24.65 vs 26.58), more false identifications (25.45 vs 17.75), and had a lower group discrimination score (Az = 0.85 vs 0.92). (All comparisons were significant at p < 0.05.) Two explanations are suggested. Aging may affect the ability to discriminate among voices as it does the ability to discriminate among phonemes [P.J. Price and HJ. Simon, L Acoust. Soc. Am. 76, 405–410 (1984)]. Alternatively, younger listeners may discriminate better because they have more experience with the voices of their peers than do older listeners.