14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

Does Repeated Exposure to A Target Voice Reduce The Impact of a Similar Voice?

Pär Wretling (1), Kirk P. H. Sullivan (1), Frank Schlichting (2)

(1) Umeå University, Sweden; (2) University of Hamburg, Germany

It has been demonstrated that a high-quality imitation of a voice can lead to confusion when part of a voice line-up and that discrimination ability does not increase as a consequence of repeated exposure to an imitation of a familiar voice. In this paper the imitation is used only as a distracter in the line-up. The question examined is whether there is a reduction in the impact of the imitation due to repeated exposure. When the imitated voice was the target voice no significant change in response was detected. However, when the imitator's natural voice was the target voice a significant difference in the impact of the similar voice was detected. The degree of variation in the first block responses can be seen as reflecting the security of voice selection. The weaker this is, the greater the possibility for change due to repeated exposure to a target voice.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Wretling, Pär / Sullivan, Kirk P. H. / Schlichting, Frank (1999): "Does repeated exposure to a target voice reduce the impact of a similar voice?", In ICPhS-14, 1385-1388.