An Experimental Study of the Relative Importance of Acoustic Parameters for Auditory Speaker Recognition

Many previous experimenters, by manipulating parameters in isolation, have examined the potentiality of these parameters as speaker-characterizing features, not their relative habitual importance for speaker recognition in everyday life. The two experiments reported here investigate this relative importance by the simultaneous manipulation of parameters. Using synthetic speech in a voice similarity judgment format, the first experiment employs eight factors in a restricted factorial design, and the second a subset of four of these factors in a full factorial design. Results indicate that (i) fundamental-frequency mean, formant mean and formant bandwidth are the most important parameters, among those investigated, for speaker recognition, and (ii) although listeners differ in the average score recorded, they may be treated as reacting identically to changes in the factors. Implications for perception theory are outlined.