Voice Perception: Basic Parameters

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan R. Schweinberger
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 69199027

• Final Report Year: 2017

Final Report Abstract

The human voice carries a wealth of social information including emotion, gender, age or person identity, yet relatively little research has been devoted to processes mediating auditory perception of people via their voices. In the first funding period, we had explored the role of attention for explicit and implicit voice memory for famous voices, and conducted a substantial series of experiments on adaptation-induced aftereffects in voice perception. Building on this successful research that gave substantial evidence regarding the mental representation of voices, we here pursued several main issues in voice perception: First, we exploited new voice morphing software for performing independent morphing across each of five acoustic parameters (F0, formant frequencies, spectrum level information, aperiodicity, and time), and investigated the differential contribution of these acoustic parameters to the perception of speaker gender and age. Second, in an attempt to delineate individual contributions of basic low-level information to adaptation, we use single parameter-modified adaptor voices to create aftereffects in the perception of speaker gender and age. Third, considering the lack of research with personally familiar voices, we assessed two samples of young adult secondary school pupils, and documented gender differences and individual differences (both on the speaker and listener level) in two extensive studies. Fourth, in collaboration with project 6 (Zäske), we performed two EEG studies investigating induced oscillatory responses as potential correlates of voice familiarity. Overall, this project substantially improved our understanding of basic acoustic, perceptual and neuronal processes involved in human voice perception.

Publications

• (2013). Adaptation Aftereffects in Vocal Emotion Perception Elicited by Expressive Faces and Voices. Plos ONE
  Skuk, V. G., Schweinberger, S. R.
  
• (2013). Gender Differences in Familiar Voice Identification. Hearing Research, 296, 131-140
  Skuk, V. G., Schweinberger, S. R.
  
• (2013). Perceiving vocal age and gender: An adaptation approach. Acta Psychologica, 144(3), 583-593
  Zäske, R., Skuk, V. G., Kaufmann, J. M., & Schweinberger, S. R.
  
• (2013). Temporally variable multi-aspect N-way morphing based on interference-free speech representations. In Proc. Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA), 2013 Asia-Pacific, 1-10
  Kawahara, H., Morise, M., Banno, H., & Skuk, V.G.
  
• (2014). Electrophysiological Correlates of Voice Learning and Recognition. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(33), 10821-10831
  Zäske, R., Volberg, G., Kovács, G., & Schweinberger, S. R.
  
• (2014). Influences of Fundamental Frequency, Formant Frequencies, Aperiodicity and Spectrum Level on the Perception of Voice Gender. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(1), 285-296
  Skuk, V. G., Schweinberger, S. R.
  
• (2014). Speaker Perception. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 5(1), 15-25
  Schweinberger, S. R., Kawahara, H., Simpson, A. P., Skuk, V. G., & Zäske, R.
  
• (2015). Role of Timbre and Fundamental Frequency in Voice Gender Adaptation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(1180)
  Skuk, V. G., Damann, L. M., Schweinberger, S. R.
  
• Electrophysiological correlates of voice memory for young and old speakers in young and old listeners. Neuropsychologia
  Zäske, R., Limbach, K., Schneider, D., Skuk, V.G., Dobel, C., Guntinas-Lichius, O., & Schweinberger, S.R.
  
• Autistic Traits are Linked to Individual Differences in Familiar Voice Identification. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
  Skuk, V.G., Palermo, R., Broemer, L., & Schweinberger, S.R.