Study of the Phenomenon of Phonetic Convergence Thanks to Speech Dominoes

Abstract

During an interaction people are known to mutually adapt. Phonetic adaptation has been studied notably for prosodic parameters such as loudness, speech rate or fundamental frequency. In most of the cases, results are contradictory and the effectiveness of phonetic convergence during an interaction remains an open issue. This paper describes an experiment based on a children game known as speech dominoes that enabled us to collect several hundreds of syllables uttered by different speakers in different conditions: alone before any interaction vs. after it, in a mediated interaction vs. in a face-to-face interaction. Speech recognition techniques were then applied to globally characterize a possible phonetic convergence.

Measuring phonetic convergence in speech production

“…On another item, the talker might converge on vowel formants or duration instead. Indeed, this is the kind of pattern that has been found in studies that have examined multiple acoustic attributes (Putman and Street, 1984; Pardo, 2010; Lelong and Bailly, 2011; Levitan and Hirschberg, 2011; Pardo et al, 2012, 2013a,b). When listeners perform an AXB perceptual similarity task, they are effectively collapsing across these multi-dimensional acoustic patterns, providing a more reliable measure of phonetic convergence than any single acoustic-phonetic attribute.…”

“…Recently, studies employing acoustic-phonetic measures have examined duration (Goldinger, 1998; Mitterer and Ernestus, 2008; Pardo, 2010), speaking rate (Pardo et al, 2010, 2013a) F0 or intonation contour (Gregory et al, 1997; Goldinger, 1998; Pardo, 2010; Lelong and Bailly, 2011; Levitan and Hirschberg, 2011; Babel and Bulatov, 2012), intensity (Levitan and Hirschberg, 2011), voice quality (Levitan and Hirschberg, 2011), vowel spectra (Vallabha and Tuller, 2004; Pardo et al, 2010, 2012, 2013a,b; Lelong and Bailly, 2011; Babel, 2012), voice onset time (Sancier and Fowler, 1997; Fowler et al, 2003; Shockley et al, 2004; Sanchez et al, 2010; Nielsen, 2011), lip aperture (Gentilucci and Bernardis, 2007) and individual phonemic variants (Coupland, 1984; Delvaux and Soquet, 2007; Mitterer and Ernestus, 2008; Honorof et al, 2011). Most studies have only focused on a single attribute, while a few have examined more than one attribute at a time (Goldinger, 1998; Pardo et al, 2010, 2012, 2013a,b; Lelong and Bailly, 2011; Levitan and Hirschberg, 2011). …”

Converging toward a common speech code: imitative and perceptuo-motor recalibration processes in speech production

“…Phonetic convergence effects have been initially explored during natural and interactive settings, notably during conversational exchanges between two speaking partners (Pardo, 2006; Aubanel and Nguyen, 2010; Pardo et al, 2010; Kim et al, 2011; Lelong and Bailly, 2011). This led to the hypothesis that “speech accommodation” may facilitate conversational exchange by contributing to setting a common ground between speakers (Giles et al, 1991; see also Garrod and Pickering, 2004; Pickering and Garrod, 2004, 2007).…”

“…The behavior of each talker can evolve with respect to that of the other talker in two opposite directions: it may become more similar to the other talker's behavior (a phenomenon referred to as convergence) or more dissimilar. Convergence effects have been shown to be systematic and recurrent, and manifest themselves under many different forms, including posture (Shockley et al, 2003), head movements and facial expressions (Estow et al, 2007; Sato and Yoshikawa, 2007) and, regarding speech, vocal intensity (Natale, 1975; Gentilucci and Bernardis, 2007), speech rate (Giles et al, 1991; Bosshardt et al, 1997), voice onset time (Flege, 1987; Flege and Eefting, 1987; Sancier and Fowler, 1997; Fowler et al, 2008), fundamental frequency, and pitch curve (Gregory, 1986; Gregory et al, 1993; Bosshardt et al, 1997; Kappes et al, 2009; Babel and Bulatov, 2012), formant frequencies and spectral distributions (Gentilucci and Cattaneo, 2005; Delvaux and Soquet, 2007; Gentilucci and Bernardis, 2007; Aubanel and Nguyen, 2010; Lelong and Bailly, 2011). Apart from directly assessing phonetic convergence on acoustic parameters, other studies measured convergence by means of perceptual judgments, mostly using AXB tests (Goldinger, 1998; Goldinger and Azuma, 2004; Pardo, 2006; Pardo et al, 2010; Kim et al, 2011).…”

“…Importantly, phonetic convergence has been shown to manifest in a variety of ways. Some involve natural settings, as during conversational exchange when exposure to the speech of others leads to phonetic convergence with that speech (Natale, 1975; Pardo, 2006; Aubanel and Nguyen, 2010; Pardo et al, 2010; Kim et al, 2011; Lelong and Bailly, 2011), or when exposure to a second language influences speech production of a native language, and vice-versa (Flege, 1987; Flege and Eefting, 1987; Sancier and Fowler, 1997; Fowler et al, 2008). Other involve non-interactive situations of communication, as when hearing and/or seeing a recorded speaker influences the production of similar or dissimilar speech sounds (Goldinger and Azuma, 2004; Gentilucci and Cattaneo, 2005; Delvaux and Soquet, 2007; Gentilucci and Bernardis, 2007; Kappes et al, 2009; Babel and Bulatov, 2012).…”