Voice Analysis, Attribution and Care
The human voice plays a fundamental role in human interaction. We are fine-tuned to recognise individuals from their voice, and derive various cues about emotional states, identity, personality, gender, age and health from voices. We are also very aware of our own voice and adapt its sound to varying circumstances. A loss or change in the sound of our voice can be traumatic and affect our core sense of self.
Our work includes:
Basic research on the connection between voice phonetics, voice acoustics, voice health and voice attribution
Applied research on the relation between health beliefs and voice care
Clinical and methodological research on the reliability of acoustic voice parameters across different platforms
Research Areas
Voice analysis: How can we optimise the reliability of the phonetic voice analysis system 'Vocal Profile Analysis' (VPA) and facilitate its use? How do VPA features link to the acoustic signal?
Voice attribution: What aspects of a voice lead to attributions like trustworthiness, friendliness or competence? Are these attributions stable across receiver demographics, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity? How does voice attribution relate to speaker physiology, prosody, articulatory settings and voice disorder?
Voice care: What are effective ways to prevent voices from damage? How can we make voice care more easily accessible and reach demographics and professions that would benefit from voice care? What are the benefits and limitations of modern technology like smartphones for voice care dissemination and voice assessment?
The Team
Publications and Dissemination
Schaeffler, F., Parry, A. M., Beck, J., Rees, M., Schaeffler, S., & Whittaker, T. (2023). Comparing vocal health and attitudes to voice care in primary teachers and voiceover artists–a survey study using the health belief model. Journal of Voice. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2023.02.005
Miley, E. V., Schaeffler, F., Beck, J., Eichner, M., & Jannetts, S. (2021). Secure account-based data capture with smartphones–preliminary results from a study of articulatory precision in clinical depression. Linguistics Vanguard, 7(s1), 20190015. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0015
Schaeffler, F., Eichner, M., & Beck, J. (2019). Towards ordinal classification of voice quality features with acoustic parameters. Studientexte zur Sprachkommunikation: Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung 2019, 288-295. http://www.essv.de/pdf/2019_288_295.pdf
Jannetts, S., Schaeffler, F., Beck, J., & Cowen, S. (2019). Assessing voice health using smartphones: bias and random error of acoustic voice parameters captured by different smartphone types. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 54(2), 292-305. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12457
Schaeffler, F., Jannetts, S., & Beck, J. M. (2019). Reliability of clinical voice parameters captured with smartphones – measurements of added noise and spectral tilt. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association INTERSPEECH, Graz, Austria, 15-19 September 2019. ISCA. http://dx.doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2019-2910
Beck, J. M., & Schaeffler, F. (2015). Voice quality variation in Scottish adolescents: gender versus geography. Proceedings of the 18th ICPhS, Glasgow. https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2015/Papers/ICPHS0737.pdf
Beck, J. (2005) Perceptual analysis of voice quality: the place of Vocal Profile Analysis. In A Figure of Speech: a Festschrift for John Laver, pp. 285-322, London.
Funding
Funding we have received include:
“Innovative Voice-over Casting”, Jun 2020- Aug 2021, Scottish Enterprise SMART:SCOTLAND feasibility study grant, £67,687.
“Mobile voice monitoring for occupational voice users”, 2015, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland Research Incentive Grant, £7200.
Impact
Our research has proven impact, for example in the areas of
Forensic Phonetics: Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) has influenced the practice of forensic phoneticians, police, legal practitioners and their clients.
International clinical guidelines and health policy: Our findings about acoustic voice parameters reliability on mobile phones informed international guidelines for clinical voice assessment and therapy during the Covid19 pandemic.
Our research is currently also applied to commercialisation efforts in the creative industries and health & wellbeing contexts.
See our 2021 REF Impact Case Study for details.