Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 4, 2025

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Speech beyond the binary: Some acoustic-phonetic and auditory-perceptual characteristics of non-binary speakers
1Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas 79902, USA bmmerritt@utep.edu.
Abstract:
Speech acoustics research typically assumes speakers are men or women with speech characteristics associated with these two gender categories. Less work has assessed acoustic-phonetic characteristics of non-binary speakers. This study examined acoustic-phonetic features across adult cisgender (15 men and 15 women) and subgroups of transgender (15 non-binary, 7 transgender men, and 7 transgender women) speakers and relations among these features and perceptual ratings of gender identity and masculinity/femininity. Differing acoustic-phonetic features were predictive of confidence in speaker gender and masculinity/femininity across cisgender and transgender speakers. Non-binary speakers were perceptually rated within an intermediate range of cisgender women and all other groups.
Related Concept Videos
Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same...
Auditory Perception
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...
Hearing
Lateralization
Sensory Modalities
General senses refer to the broad category of sensory information detected by receptors in the body and can be further grouped into somatic and visceral senses. Somatic sensations include touch, pressure, temperature, and pain and are essential for navigating our environment and...

