Relative and Absolute Judgments of Speech Rate from Masked and Content-Standard Stimuli The Influence of Vocal Frequency and Intensity

In two previous studies, the perception of speech rate was found to be positively related to the vocal frequency and intensity of speech. In those studies, a single sample of spontaneous, content-masked speech was used to produce nine stimuli by factorially varying three levels of each vocal frequency and intensity, while controlling the actual speech rate of the stimuli. Participants were asked to judge each stimulus, preceded by a standard, “anchoring,” stimulus as to its speech rate, pitch, loudness, and duration. The purpose of the three studies reported here was to examine the generalizability of the previous findings by using stimuli that were nonmasked and/or were not preceded by an anchoring stimulus. In each study, nine speech stimuli were prepared, as described above, and participants were asked to make judgments about the rate, pitch, loudness, and duration of each stimulus. In the first study, the stimuli were masked but were not preceded by an anchoring stimulus. In the second study, participants listened to content-standard speech stimuli preceded by an anchoring stimulus. Finally, in the third study, content-standard stimuli without an anchoring stimulus were used. In addition, studies two and three used speech segments of a male and a female speaker. The findings from the three studies replicated the central findings of the previous studies. They suggest, in other words, that rate perception of speech is indeed influenced by vocal frequency and, to some extent, by intensity, and that these relationships are not materially altered by the speakers'gender.