A new method for eliciting three speaking styles in the laboratory

Area of Science:

• Phonetics
• Speech Science
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Controlled elicitation of distinct speaking styles is crucial for speech research.
• Previous methods lacked consistency in producing varied speech styles.
• Understanding speech style variations aids in fields like speech synthesis and forensic phonetics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a method for eliciting three speaking styles: reduced, citation, and hyperarticulated.
• To assess the consistency and effectiveness of the elicitation method across participants.
• To generate controlled, style-varying sentence materials for laboratory use.

Main Methods:

• Speaking styles were elicited in a laboratory setting using controlled sentence materials.
• Reduced speech was induced via a distractor task involving short-term memory digit recall.
• Citation style represented standard read speech, while hyperarticulated style involved careful rereading.

Main Results:

• In the first experiment, 6 out of 12 talkers produced a reduced style under cognitive load compared to citation style.
• All talkers consistently produced citation and hyperarticulated styles in both experiments.
• In the second experiment with increased cognitive load, 6 out of 10 talkers differentiated all three styles.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully demonstrated the possibility of eliciting controlled speaking style variations in a laboratory.
• The method shows potential for generating stimulus materials for speech research.
• Further refinement is needed to ensure consistent elicitation of all three speaking styles across all participants.