Unintended imitation of fundamental frequency in female speakers

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

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
Volume45
Pages (from-to)10-14
Number of pages5
ISSN1401-5439
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jan 2019

ID: 231248333