The perception of breathiness: Acoustic correlates and the influence of methodological factors

Abstract

Research on the acoustic correlates of breathiness has been plagued by a lack of consistent findings across studies and low intra- and inter-rater agreement. Sources of variability can arise from different sources including: differences in stimulus types (recorded or synthesized); differences in speaker groups (for recorded stimuli) or in synthesis parameters (for synthesized stimuli); differences in experimental methodologies (task type, number of repetitions, listener backgrounds and experience). This review discussed these sources of variability, and described solutions that have the potential to address the variability and the inconsistencies often reported in the literature. A critical appraisal of the evidence about the relative importance of various acoustic measures resulted in the identification of measures of periodicity, noise content, and high-to-low frequency energy as the most likely acoustic correlates of breathiness.