AUTHOR=Kriengwatana Buddhamas , Escudero Paola , Kerkhoven Anne H. , Cate Carel ten TITLE=A general auditory bias for handling speaker variability in speech? Evidence in humans and songbirds JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=6 YEAR=2015 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01243 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01243 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=
Different speakers produce the same speech sound differently, yet listeners are still able to reliably identify the speech sound. How listeners can adjust their perception to compensate for speaker differences in speech, and whether these compensatory processes are unique only to humans, is still not fully understood. In this study we compare the ability of humans and zebra finches to categorize vowels despite speaker variation in speech in order to test the hypothesis that accommodating speaker and gender differences in isolated vowels can be achieved without prior experience with speaker-related variability. Using a behavioral Go/No-go task and identical stimuli, we compared Australian English adults’ (naïve to Dutch) and zebra finches’ (naïve to human speech) ability to categorize /