Modelling personality features by changing prosody in synthetic speech

Abstract

This study explores how features of brand personalities can be modelled with the prosodic parameters pitch level, pitch range, articulation rate and loudness. Experiments with parametrical diphone synthesis showed that listeners rated the prosodically changed versions better than a baseline version for the dimensions "sincerity", "competence", "sophistication", "excitement" and "ruggedness". The contribution of prosodic features such as lower pitch and an enlarged pitch range are analyzed and discussed.