Structured phonetic variation facilitates talker identification

Abstract

Listeners use talker-specific phonetic structure to facilitate language comprehension. This study tests whether sensitivity to talker-specific phonetic variation also facilitates talker identification. During training, two listener groups learned to associate talkers' voices with cartoon pseudo-faces. For one group, each talker produced characteristically different voice-onset-time values; for the other group, no talker-specific phonetic structure was present. After training, listeners were tested on talker identification for trained and novel words, which was improved for those who heard structured phonetic variation compared to those who did not. These findings suggest an additive benefit of talker-specific phonetic variation for talker identification beyond traditional indexical cues.