Toward the development of practical methods of evaluating speaker recognizability

The development of practical methods of predicting speaker recognizability in communication systems has had to await the development of an adequate perceptual voice taxonomy. Previous efforts have been hampered by inadequate voice samples and inappropriate scaling techniques. An intensive experimental screening of more than 550 potential voice descriptors permitted the development of a sensitive, comprehensive voice-rating form which was used by an experienced listening crew to characterize voice samples from 80 male speakers. Factor analysis was used to identify the elementary perceptual parameters of individual differences in speech and to classify voices in a perceptual voice trait space. Implications for the development of tests of speaker recognizability are discussed.