Presentation: Sheng-Fu
Summary: Sarah
This study investigated the relationship between
acoustic vowel space and perceived speaking rate. It was hypothesized that
speaking rate should be perceived faster if longer acoustic vowel distance is
traversed during the same period of time. A perception experiment was
conducted. The test sentence was produced by 20 female and 20 male talkers. Among
the same gender, duration and f0 were equalized, leaving acoustic vowel space the
only variable that varied across speakers. Listeners were instructed to rate the
perceived speaking tempo. Regression analyses revealed a positive correlation
between vowel space and perceived tempo for both genders. This finding
therefore confirmed the suggestion that non-durational parameters, such as
acoustic vowel space, also contributed to listeners’ judgment of speaking rate.
