Is speech alignment to talkers or tasks?

Abstract

Speech alignment, the tendency of individuals to subtly imitate each other’s speaking style, is often assessed by comparing a subject’s baseline and shadowed utterances to a model’s utterances often through perceptual ratings. These types of comparisons provide information about the occurrence of a change in subject’s speech, but do not indicate that this change is towards the specific shadowed model. Three studies investigated whether alignment is specific to a shadowed model. Experiment 1 involved the classic baseline to shadowed comparison to confirm that subjects did, in fact, sound more like their model when they shadowed, relative to any pre-existing similarities between a subject and model. Experiment 2 tested whether subjects’ utterances sounded more similar to the model they had shadowed or to another unshadowed model. Experiment 3 examined whether subjects’ utterances sounded more similar to the model they had shadowed or to another subject who shadowed a different model. Results of all experiments revealed that subjects sounded more similar to the model they had shadowed. This suggests that shadowing-based speech alignment is not just a change; it is a change in the direction of the shadowed model, specifically.

Phonetic convergence across multiple measures and model talkers

“…In Goldinger (1998), even the exposure condition with zero prior repetitions yielded 60% detection levels in high-frequency words. All of the AXB studies listed in Table 1 reported average convergence levels less than 62% (except Dias & Rosenblum, 2016), and four used low-frequency words, which should have elicited the highest levels of convergence (Babel et al, 2014;Miller et al, 2010Miller et al, , 2013Shockley et al, 2004). It is worth noting that the higher performance levels reported in Goldinger (1998) have only been observed in one other study using AXB convergence assessment- Dias and Rosenblum (2016) reported an overall AXB M = .69.…”

Dimension‐Based Statistical Learning Affects Both Speech Perception and Production

“…Speech production is also influenced by speech input from other talkers. For example, when participants rapidly repeat (shadow) recorded speech from another talker (Goldinger, 1998;Marslen-Wilson, 1973), they tend to come to imitate acoustic details of the shadowed talker (Fowler, Brown, Sabadini, & Welhing, 2003;Goldinger, 1998;Honorof, Weihing, & Fowler, 2011;Miller, Sanchez, & Rosenblum, 2013;Roon & Gafos, 2014;Shockley, Sabadini, & Fowler, 2004). Speech experienced in more natural conversational interactions can also influence speech production (Coupland & Giles, 1988;Giles, 1973Giles, , 1977Pardo, 2006;Pardo, Gibbons, Suppes, & Krauss, 2012;Pardo, Jay, & Krauss, 2010).…”

Limitations of difference-in-difference for measuring convergence

“…Some work includes a comparison of distance between subjects and their actual interlocutors or model talkers versus distance between 'pseudo-pairs' of subjects and speakers or model talkers they did not interact with (e.g., Levitan & Hirschberg, 2011;Miller, Sanchez, & Rosenblum, 2014;Sanker, 2015). Such methods are generally aimed at reducing measurement of convergence in shifts that are actually due to task-based effects.…”