Gender classification based upon statistics of the spectral distributions: Walking perception
Xiaofeng Li, Richard E. Pastore, Robert J. Logan · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1991
The current study continued the previous research using as stimuli the sounds of humans walking on a hard surface [Li et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 87, S24 (1990)] to investigate the acoustic properties that delineated categories of ecologically valid auditory source events. Various statistics of the walking spectra were computed, and subjected to a factor analysis in order to identify the spectral properties that differentiated between actual gender class of source events (male and female walkers). Two classes of information were identified as important in distinguishing between the male and female spectra: (1) central tendency and (2) slopes of spectral attack and decay. A multiple regression analysis indicated the importance of these classes of information in determining the perception of the walker gender. A follow-up experiment then manipulated these statistical properties to verify their contributions in the perceptual classification of walker gender. [Work supported by NSF.]