Assessment of variation between and within speakers
Ruth Huntley Bahr · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2003
While few individuals would argue that vocal cues can signal a person’s identity, it is difficult to specify exactly which parameter(s) provide the most salient information for speaker identification. Previous literature has suggested that speaking fundamental frequency, long-term spectra, vowel formant frequencies, and speech tempo can provide speaker-specific information. However, investigations focused on automatic speaker identification have provided less than satisfactory results. These findings could be related to how each acoustic parameter is measured or, more probably, to the idea that these acoustic parameters interact in specific ways that may be more obvious in the perceptual realm and may vary across speaking situations. To further complicate matters, individuals may speak more than one language or use multiple dialects. Little is known about the effect of code switching on voice production and identification. The purpose of this presentation is to present some of the relevant literature on voice recognition and factors related to misidentification. The role of intraspeaker variability will be discussed with a special emphasis on bilingualism and bidialectalism. Implications for voice production in augmentative and alternative communication devices will be described.