The Speaker Identification Ability of Blind and Sighted Listeners: An Empirical Investigation

148 Pages·2016·7.43 MB·English

by  Almut Braun (auth.)

Almut Braun
The Speaker
Identification Ability of
Blind and Sighted Listeners
An Empirical Investigation
fi
The Speaker Identi cation Ability of Blind
and Sighted Listeners
Almut Braun
The Speaker
Identification Ability of
Blind and Sighted
Listeners
An Empirical Investigation
Almut Braun
York,UnitedKingdom
Dissertation Philipps-UniversitätMarburg, 2015
ISBN978-3-658-15197-3 ISBN978-3-658-15198-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-15198-0
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016947740
SpringerVS
©SpringerFachmedienWiesbaden2016
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart
ofthematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,
recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexempt
fromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse.
Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformationinthis
bookarebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication.Neitherthepublishernorthe
authorsortheeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothematerialcontained
hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.
Printedonacid-freepaper
ThisSpringerVSimprintispublishedbySpringerNature
TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerFachmedienWiesbadenGmbH
Meiner Familie

”We see the world the way we do
not because that is the way it is,
but because we have these
ways of seeing.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my first supervisor
Prof. Dr. Hermann J. Künzel, whose expertise and patience guided me through
this project. I also want to gratefully thank Prof. Dr. Richard Wiese, my second
supervisor, for his constructive feedback and his very helpful comments.
Clearly, this research project could not have been done without the help of a
lot of other people whom I want to thank here: I am truly thankful to Dr. Gea de
Jong-Lendle, who has been a fantastic colleague, friend and a constant source of
advice, encouragement and support. Furthermore, I want to especially thank Jos
Vermeulen MSc for the fruitful discussions we had about science and for being a
wonderful and competent advisor in every respect. Prof. Dr. Andreas Jansen and
Dr. Jens Sommer I thank for their collaboration and the opportunity to expand
my research activities in the field of fMRI. I thank Markus Jesberg for helping
me with the mobile phone re-recordings and Jeffrey Michael Falk for carefully
proofreading my thesis.
Of course, this project would not have been possible without my partici-
pants from Aßlar, Bad Vilbel, Berlin, Bremen, Darmstadt, Delmenhorst, Düren,
Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Gießen, Göttingen, Hamburg, Hannover, Kassel, Lud-
wigsburg, Ludwigshafen, Mainz, Marburg, Mössingen, München, Ofterdingen,
Oldenburg, Remshalden, Reutlingen, Schwäbisch-Hall, Sindelfingen, Stuttgart
and Würzburg. I thank every single participant so much for being part of it. Also,
I thank the following institutions and their staff for forwarding my requests and
helping me to a great extent with organizational issues: ABSV Berlin, Bayer-
ischer Blinden- und Sehbehindertenbund, BFW Mainz, BFW Würzburg, BSV
Niedersachsen – Regionalverein Hannover, BSV Bremen, Blindenverein Olden-
burg, BliZ of Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen, BSB Hessen, BSV Würt-
temberg, Deutscher Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverband, DialogMuseum
Frankfurt, Johann-August-Zeune-Schule Berlin, Louis-Braille-Schule Düren,
RES IT of Deutsche Blindenstudienanstalt Marburg and SBS of Philipps-
Universität Marburg. Furthermore, I thank Bernd Haack and Daniela Rehberg
for all the efforts they made to provide me with participants.
Gratefully I acknowledge the financial support from Dr. Wolff’sche
Stiftung (scholarship), the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and
Acoustics (research grant) and Philipps-Universität Marburg (research grant).
8 Acknowledgements
Finally I want to express my deep gratitude to my loving family and friends,
especially to my mother Irene who supported me in any way she could and
helped tremendously with the recruitment of participants. I also want to genuine-
ly thank my father Manfred for all the support he gave me before he sadly passed
away during the course of my doctoral research. My sister, Silke, I cordially
thank for being incredibly supportive in so many ways and for her advice on the
medical parts of my research. Furthermore, I gratefully thank my grandmother
Renate who financially supported my computer equipment and who has always
been eager to hear about my research and my life.
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. 7
Table of Contents ................................................................................................ 9
Abstract ............................................................................................................. 13
Deutsche Zusammenfassung ............................................................................ 15
List of Tables ..................................................................................................... 17
List of Figures ................................................................................................... 19
Abbreviations .................................................................................................... 21
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 23
1 The sensory compensation hypothesis ....................................................... 27
1.1 Former beliefs ...................................................................................... 27
1.2 Early research on sensory compensation in the blind .......................... 28
1.3 Popularity of the sensory compensation hypothesis ............................. 29
2 Prior research on blind listeners’ auditory abilities ................................. 31
2.1 Auditory abilities .................................................................................. 31
2.1.1 Speech discrimination ............................................................... 31
2.1.2 Auditory attention ..................................................................... 31
2.1.3 Perception of acoustic details .................................................... 32
2.1.4 Temporal aspects ...................................................................... 32
2.1.5 Pattern recognition .................................................................... 33
2.1.6 Perception of pitch and loudness .............................................. 34
2.1.7 Absolute threshold measurements ............................................ 34
2.2 Simple versus complex auditory functions .......................................... 35
2.3 Auditory memory ................................................................................. 36
10 Table of Contents
2.3.1 Short-term memory and working memory ................................ 37
2.3.2 Long-term memory ................................................................... 38
2.4 Physiological and brain imaging studies .............................................. 39
2.5 Speaker identification and discrimination abilities .............................. 41
2.5.1 Behavioral studies on blind listeners’ speaker recognition
abilities..................................................................................... 42
2.5.2 Physiological studies on blind listeners’ speaker recognition
abilities..................................................................................... 44
2.6 Summary .............................................................................................. 47
3 Possible influences on human speaker identification ............................... 49
3.1 Listener characteristics ......................................................................... 49
3.1.1 Blind listeners’ onset and duration of blindness ....................... 49
3.1.2 Listeners’ musical experience ................................................... 49
3.1.3 Male vs. female listeners ........................................................... 50
3.1.4 Listeners’ ages .......................................................................... 51
3.1.5 Blind listeners’ echolocation abilities ....................................... 51
3.1.6 Listeners’ talent and training in speaker identification ............. 52
3.2 Voice lineup characteristics ................................................................. 53
3.2.1 Signal quality – (mobile) telephone transmission ..................... 53
3.2.2 Voice disguise – whisper .......................................................... 54
3.2.3 Time .......................................................................................... 56
4 Issues to consider when creating a voice lineup ........................................ 57
5 Hypotheses for the experiment ................................................................... 59
6 Speaker identification experiment ............................................................. 61
6.1 Experimental design ............................................................................. 61
6.1.1 Method ...................................................................................... 61
6.1.2 Speakers .................................................................................... 64
6.1.3 Material ..................................................................................... 64
6.1.4 Listeners .................................................................................... 66
Table of Contents 11
6.2 Execution of the experiment ................................................................ 68
6.2.1 Pretest ....................................................................................... 68
6.2.2 Familiarization .......................................................................... 69
6.2.3 Voice lineup presentation ......................................................... 70
7 Results .......................................................................................................... 73
7.1 Fitting a multinomial log-linear model ................................................ 73
7.2 Influence of signal quality on identification scores .............................. 76
7.3 Influence of time delay on identification scores................................... 78
7.4 Further investigated influences ............................................................ 78
7.4.1 Male vs. female listeners ........................................................... 78
7.4.2 Target-absent vs. target-present voice lineups .......................... 78
7.4.3 Comparison of correct rejection rates and hit rates ................... 79
7.4.4 Influence of onset and duration of blindness ............................ 81
7.4.5 Confidence accuracy ................................................................. 82
7.4.6 Musically trained vs. musically untrained listeners .................. 82
7.5 Summary 1 ........................................................................................... 83
7.6 Confusion rates: target speaker vs. distractor speakers ........................ 83
7.7 Listeners’ perception and acoustic measurements ............................... 86
7.7.1 Acoustic measurements (speakers) ........................................... 86
7.7.2 Perceptual feedback (listeners) ................................................. 92
7.8 Summary 2 ........................................................................................... 96
8 Interview with visually impaired forensic audio analysts ........................ 97
9 Discussion ..................................................................................................... 99
9.1 Identification of unfamiliar speakers .................................................... 99
9.2 Signal quality ..................................................................................... 100
9.3 Forgetting ........................................................................................... 102
9.4 Target-absent and target-present lineups ............................................ 104
9.5 Confusion rates .................................................................................. 105