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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 9, 2025

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception

Published on: August 9, 2024

Foreign language talker identification does not generalize to new talkers.

Jayden J Lee¹, Jessica A A Tin¹, Tyler K Perrachione²

¹Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|October 23, 2024

Summary

Learning to identify foreign language speakers does not improve with practice if the language is not understood. Sustained practice identifying Mandarin speakers did not lead to generalizable talker identification skills in English speakers without linguistic knowledge.

Keywords:

Language/memory interactions Speech perception Talker identification Voice recognition

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Last Updated: Jun 9, 2025

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception

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Published on: August 9, 2024

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

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Published on: September 27, 2024

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Published on: January 26, 2024

Area of Science:

Auditory perception
Speech processing
Second language acquisition

Background:

Listeners are less accurate at identifying talkers in a foreign language compared to their native language.
It is unclear if this language-familiarity effect stems from lack of experience or enhanced information processing during linguistic tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if sustained practice identifying foreign-language talkers leads to generalizable improvements.
To determine if listeners can improve foreign-language talker identification without understanding the speech.

Main Methods:

English-speaking adults with no prior Mandarin experience practiced identifying Mandarin talkers for four days.
Two training conditions were used: 'same-voices' (identifying the same talkers for three days, then new talkers) and 'different-voices' (identifying new talkers daily).
Generalization of talker identification to new Mandarin talkers was assessed on the fourth day.

Main Results:

Listeners in the 'same-voices' condition improved daily for the first three days but returned to baseline when identifying new talkers.
Listeners in the 'different-voices' condition showed no improvement over the four days.
Neither group demonstrated generalized improvement in identifying new Mandarin talkers.

Conclusions:

Sustained practice identifying foreign-language talkers does not yield generalizable skills without linguistic comprehension.
Specific linguistic knowledge appears necessary for developing robust foreign-language talker-identification abilities.