The Effect of Habitual Speech Rate on Speaker-Specific Processing in English Stop Voicing Perception

• Published in: Language and speech Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 692 - 701
• Main Authors: Ting, Connie, Kang, Yoonjung
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-09-2024; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Acoustic Stimulation; Adult; Dialogue; English language; Female; Humans; Language; Listening; Male; Original; Phonetics; Speech Acoustics; Speech Perception; Speech rate; Stops; Syllables; Time Factors; Voice onset time (VOT); Voice Quality; Voicing; Young Adult; Speech rate; VOT; individual speaker variation; speech perception
• ISSN: 0023-8309; 1756-6053; 1756-6053
• DOI: 10.1177/00238309231188078

This study investigates listeners’ ability to track individual speakers’ habitual speech rate in a dialogue and adjust their perception of durational contrasts. Previous studies that found such adjustments are inconclusive as adjustments can be attributed to exemplars of target structures in the dialogue rather than perceptual calibration of habitual speech rates. In this study, English listeners were presented with a dialogue between a fast and slow speaker, containing no stressed syllable-initial voiceless stops. Listeners then categorized /pi/-/bi/ syllables differing along a voice onset time continuum. Results did not show conclusive evidence that listeners’ response differed systematically depending on speakers’ habitual speech rate.