Influence of the prosody of spoken language on recognition and memory for vocal quality
Sumi Shigeno · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
This study examined whether recognition and memory for vocal quality of a speaker who speaks either a native language or non-native language should be influenced by the prosody of the language that the speaker utters. Voices of 12 speakers were recorded. They were six Japanese people and six Americans and Britons. All speakers uttered short sentences in their respective native languages (i.e., Japanese for Japanese speakers and English for Americans and Britons) and in a non-native language (i.e., English for Japanese speakers and Japanese for Americans and Britons). Ten Japanese participants rated the vocal quality of speakers in the first session. After 1 week the same experiment was again conducted in the second session. Results showed that the performance of identification of speakers as Japanese or as non-Japanese was comparatively accurate even though the ratings on the speakers’ voices were varied as the language spoken by the speakers. Ratings of the voices were compared further between two sessions and little difference was found, irrespective of a 1-week blank. Results suggest that the memory for vocal quality is robust, but that the recognition of vocal quality is dependent on the prosody of the language spoken by speakers.