Page 15 - The Modul of Psycholinguistics Studies_2

glides, voiced vs. voiceless plosives, etc.) and they are
certainly affected by changes in speaking tempo. Another

major source of variation is articulatory carefulness vs.
sloppiness which is typical for connected speech (

articulatory "undershoot" is obviously reflected in the
acoustic properties of the sounds produced).
3) Variation due to different speaker identity

The resulting acoustic structure of concrete
speech productions depends on the physical and
psychological properties of individual speakers. Men,

women, and children generally produce voices having
different pitch. Because speakers have vocal tracts of

different sizes (due to sex and age especially) the
resonant frequencies (formants), which are important for
recognition of speech sounds, will vary in their absolute

values across individuals (see Figure 3 for an illustration
of this). Research shows that infants at the age of 7.5

months cannot recognize information presented by
speakers of different genders; however by the age of 10.5
months, they can detect the similarities. Dialect and

foreign accent can also cause variation, as can the social
characteristics of the speaker and listener.

Psycholinguistics | 15