Perceptual normalization for speaking rate III: Effects of the rate of one voice on perception of another.

Individuals vary their speaking rate, and listeners use the speaking rate of precursor sentences to adjust for these changes (Kidd, 1989). Most of the research on this adjustment process has focused on situations in which there was only a single stream of speech over which such perceptual adjustment could occur. Yet listeners are often faced with environments in which multiple people are speaking simultaneously. Each of these voices provides speaking rate information. The challenge for the listener is to determine which sources of information should apply in a speech perception situation. Three studies examined when listeners would use rate information from one voice to adjust their perception of another voice. Results suggested that if only one source of duration information was available, listeners used that information, regardless of the speaker or the speaker's spatial location. When multiple sources were available, listeners primarily used information from the same source as the target item. However, even information from a source that differed in both location and talker still influenced perception to a slight degree.