Unintended imitation of fundamental frequency in female speakers

Laura Lund Kuhlmann, Jenny Iwarsson

Abstract

Objective: Former studies have shown that humans unintentionally adopt speech characteristics from their conversation partners, a phenomenon known as speech convergence. This study investigated imitation of fundamental frequency (Fo) in nine healthy females in a repetition task.
Method: The design included two conditions; loud reading (baseline) and repetition after a model talker. The model talker was a female with a high-pitched voice and stimuli included both words and nonwords. All productions were analyzed with regard to mean and SD of Fo and compared between
conditions and word types.
Results: The participants showed different patterns regarding the effect on Fo, thus indicating that some individuals are more likely to change their speaking Fo in a repetition task than others. Group results showed somewhat but not significantly higher mean Fo in the repetition task as compared to
baseline (reading). Moreover, nonwords were produced with a significantly higher mean Fo than real words, in both reading and repetition conditions. No interaction effect between condition and word type was found.
Original languageEnglish
JournalLogopedics Phoniatrics Vocology
Pages (from-to)1-5
Number of pages5
ISSN1401-5439
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jan 2019

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