Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 12, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Do talkers produce less dispersed phoneme categories in a clear speaking style?
Outi Tuomainen1, Valerie Hazan1, Rachel Romeo2
1Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, University College London (UCL), Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, United Kingdom o.tuomainen@ucl.ac.uk, v.hazan@ucl.ac.uk.
Abstract:
This study investigated whether adaptations made in clear speaking styles result in more discriminable phonetic categories than in a casual style. Multiple iterations of keywords with word-initial /s/-/ʃ/ were obtained from 40 adults in casual and clear speech via picture description. For centroids, cross-category distance increased in clear speech but with no change in within-category dispersion and no effect on discriminability. However, talkers produced fewer tokens with centroids in the ambiguous region for the /s/-/ʃ/ distinction. These results suggest that, whereas interlocutor feedback regarding communicative success may promote greater segmental adaptations, it is not necessary for some adaptation to occur.
Related Concept Videos
Components of Language
Non-Verbal Cues
Hearing
Language and Cognition
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by...
Language Development
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...

