Voice similarity and the effect of the telephone: a study of the implications for earwitness evidence
Award no. RES-000-22-2582
January-December 2008
In certain crimes, a perpetrator may be heard but not seen. For example, the perpetrator may be masked, or the victim blindfolded, or it might have been too dark for a witness to see clearly, yet the voice of the criminal was heard. In such cases, 'earwitness' evidence may be provided by a 'voice parade'. The witness is asked whether he or she can pick out the voice heard during the crime from a line-up of recordings which includes the suspect's voice and a number of foil voices. Other crimes for which earwitness evidence might be possible are those where the perpetrator is heard over the telephone, for example threatening phonecalls, ransom demands, stalking, blackmail and extortion. It is not yet clear whether a voice parade can be usefully employed in such cases as there is little research into listeners' ability to recognise voices heard over the telephone. This will be addressed in this project through two studies, the first investigating the extent to which telephone transmission affects a listener's ability to distinguish among similar-sounding voices, and the second examining the reliability of a listener's performance in a voice parade for ordinary versus telephone exposure to a voice. The project will also investigate the acoustic correlates of voice similarity to lay the foundations for a framework for the description of voice similarity applicable to voice parades.
| Principal Investigator: Francis Nolan |
Co-investigator: Kirsty McDougall |
Research Assistant: Toby Hudson |
| Phonetics Laboratory Technician and Systems Manager: Geoffrey Potter |
Journal Articles
McDougall, K., Nolan, F. & Hudson, T. (2015) 'Telephone transmission and earwitnesses: performance on voice parades controlled for voice similarity.' Phonetica 72: 257-272.
McDougall, K. (2013). ‘Assessing perceived voice similarity using multidimensional scaling for the construction of voice parades.’ International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 20.2: 163-172.
Nolan, F., McDougall, K. & Hudson, T. (2013). 'Effects of the telephone on perceived voice similarity: implications for voice line-ups.' International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 20.2: 229-246.
Conference Proceedings
Nolan, F., McDougall, K., & Hudson, T. (2011). ‘Some acoustic correlates of perceived (dis)similarity between same-accent voices.’ In W.-S. Lee and E. Zee (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 17-21 August 2011, Hong Kong, 1506-1509. [pdf]
Conference Presentations
McDougall, K. (2014). ‘Phonetic correlates of perceived voice similarity: a comparison of Standard Southern British English and York English accents.’ Paper presented at the British Association of Academic Phoneticians Colloquium, Oxford, 7-9 April 2014.
McDougall, K., Harrison, P., Nolan, F., & Kirchhübel, C. (2012). ‘Voice similarity and Long Term Formant analysis.’ Paper presented at the British Association of Academic Phoneticians Colloquium, Leeds, 26-28 March 2012.
McDougall, K. (2011). ‘Acoustic correlates of perceived voice similarity: a comparison of two accents of English.’ Paper presented at the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Annual Conference, Vienna, 24-28 July 2011.
Nolan, F., French, J.P., McDougall, K., Stevens, L., & Hudson, T. (2011). ‘The role of voice quality ‘settings’ in perceived voice similarity.’ Paper presented at the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Annual Conference, Vienna, 24-28 July 2011.
Hudson, T., McDougall, K., & Nolan, F. (2010). ‘Voice similarity and the telephone.’ Poster presented at the British Association of Academic Phoneticians Colloquium, University of Westminster, 29-31 March 2010. [abstracts booklet]
Nolan, F., McDougall, K., & Hudson, T. (2010). ‘Perceived voice similarity and acoustic measures.’ Paper presented at the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Annual Conference, Trier, 18-21 July 2010.
McDougall, K., Hudson, T., & Nolan, F. (2009). ‘Voice identification accuracy following telephone and full-bandwidth exposure to a voice.’ Paper presented at the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Annual Conference, Cambridge, 2-5 August 2009.
Hudson, T., McDougall, K., & Nolan, F. (2008). ‘Effects of the telephone on perceived voice similarity.’ Paper presented at the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics Annual Conference, Lausanne, 20-23 July 2008. [abstracts booklet]
McDougall, K., Hudson, T., Lawrence, S., & Nolan, F. (2008). ‘Effects of the telephone on forensic phonetic analysis.’ Paper presented at the British Association of Academic Phoneticians Colloquium, University of Sheffield, 31 March - 2 April 2008.