The effect of experience on perceptual spaces when judging synthesized voice quality: a multidimensional scaling study.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of experience on the perceptual space of listeners when judging voice quality.

STUDY DESIGN

This was a within-subjects group design.

METHOD

Speech-language pathologists, singing voice teachers, speech-language pathology graduate students with and without experience with a voice client, graduate students who have completed a voice pedagogy course, and inexperienced served as listeners. Each participant rated the similarity of pairs of synthesized stimuli with systematically altered measurements of jitter, shimmer, and noise-to-harmonics ratio on a visual analog scale ranging from no similarity to extremely similar.

RESULTS

Results showed that participants with different levels and types of experience used different perceptual spaces (of additive noise and perturbation measures) when judging the similarity of stimulus pairs.

CONCLUSION

The conclusion was that perceptual spaces differ among individuals with different levels and types of experience when judging the similarity of pairs of stimuli with systematically altered acoustical measurements.