Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 27, 2025

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
African American English speakers' pitch variation and rate adjustments for imagined technological and human
Michelle Cohn1,2, Zion Mengesha1,3, Michal Lahav4
1Google Research, Google, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.
Abstract:
This paper examines the adaptations African American English speakers make when imagining talking to a voice assistant, compared to a close friend/family member and to a stranger. Results show that speakers slowed their rate and produced less pitch variation in voice-assistant-"directed speech" (DS), relative to human-DS. These adjustments were not mediated by how often participants reported experiencing errors with automatic speech recognition. Overall, this paper addresses a limitation in the types of language varieties explored when examining technology-DS registers and contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of human-computer interaction.
Related Concept Videos
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...
Doppler Effect - II
Design Example
Doppler Effect - I
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic
Surveys

