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To determine the effect of speakers' attempts to disguise their voices on listeners' accuracy in judgments of speakers' sex and race, 26 speakers, 13 women and 13 men, recorded six sentences under three conditions: (a) in a normal manner, (b) in a manner in which they attempted to sound like a member of the opposite sex, and (c) in a manner in which they attempted to sound like a member of the black race. Three master tapes were constructed, one for each of the three conditions. A total of 40 judges, 20 in an experiment on sex identification and 20 in one on race identification, participated in two sessions, one for each of two tapes (control and disguise) in each experiment. In each session they were asked to judge the sex or race of the speaker of each sentence and, using a seven-point confidence rating scale, to indicate the over-all confidence in their judgments at the end of each session. Analysis indicated that, although listeners' accuracy for sex and race identification was greater under the control than disguised conditions for the majority of speakers, the differences between the two conditions were relatively small. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

To determine the effect of listener's comprehension on speakers' height and weight judgments, a total of 40 speakers, 20 Americans (10 females and 10 males) and 20 non-Americans representing various nationalities (10 females and 10 males), recorded a standard prose passage. A total of three master tapes were constructed to represent the three experimental conditions: (1) American speakers' readings in English, (2) foreign speakers' reading in their native languages, and (3) foreign speakers' readings in English. A total of 30 judges, 15 females and 15 males, participated in three sessions, one for each of the three master tapes, and were asked to provide direct estimations of the height and weight of each speaker from the tapes. Listeners' comprehension does not appear to play a major role in height and weight judgmental tasks.

To determine whether listeners can accurately identify human-imitated animal sounds, 20 speakers (10 females and 10 males) recorded their imitations of cows, cats, dogs, pigs, and sheep. These recordings were randomly arranged on a master tape and presented to 30 judges for identification. Analysis indicates that listeners can accurately identify various human-imitated animal sounds. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this series of experiments was to determine the effect of prior exposure to taped stimulus material on listeners' judgments of speakers' sex, height, and weight. Two series of listening experiments, one concerned with sex identification and one with height and weight identification, were conducted. Results indicate that prior exposure to stimulus material improved the accuracy of listeners' judgments of speakers' sex, height, and weight. However, they also indicate that it is not necessary to receive prior exposure to the complete set of stimuli to achieve accurate judgments. Prior exposure to the stimulus material improved listeners' confidence in their estimates of height and weight but not in their judgments of speakers' sex.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect of speakers' attempts to disguise their voices on listeners' accuracy in judgments of height and weight. A total of six sentences were recorded by 26 speakers, 13 females and 13 males, under five conditions: in a normal manner (control condition) and in a manner in which they attempted to sound much taller and much shorter, as well as much heavier and much lighter than they actually were. Five master tapes were constructed, a control tape and four disguise tapes. Each tape contained a total of 156 sentences arranged in random order. A total of 40 judges, 20 in the height-estimation experiment and 20 in the weight-estimation experiment, participated in three sessions, one for each of the three master tapes (one control and two disguise tapes) in each experiment. They were asked to judge the height and weight of the speaker of each sentence and, using a seven-point confidence rating scale, to indicate the over-all confidence in their judgments at the end of each session. Although a majority of speakers yielded height and weight estimates consistent with the intended disguise conditions, the differences in listeners' estimates among all conditions were relatively small. Moreover, differences between speakers' actual heights and weights and listeners' height and weight estimates in the normal (control) condition were also relatively small. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

To determine whether oral tactile changes accompany improvement in articulation, 16 children were administered two tests of oral tactile perception and two tests of articulation competency at three time periods: before, during, and at the end of speech therapy. A positive relationship between articulation proficiency and oral tactile perception was established. Both articulation tests reflected a progressive improvement for the group across the three testing periods. One of the tests of oral tactile perception reflected the same progressive trend and the second test, while not exhibiting the identical trend, did reflect a general improvement from the first to the third testing period. These findings indicate that oral tactile skills appear to be important factors in speech production and that such skills should be assessed in cases of functional articulation disorders,

To determine if listeners can accurately distinguish between real and human-imitated animal sounds, a total of 165 recorded sounds (55 real and 110 human-imitated) of cats, cows, dogs, pigs, and sheep were randomly arranged on a master tape and presented to 30 listeners for discriminative judgments. Results indicate that, in general, listeners can accurately discriminate real from human-imitated animal sounds. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Correlation coefficients on height, weight, and temporal features were computed separately for 15 female and 15 male speakers. With only one exception, speakers' heights and weights were not significantly correlated with their temporal characteristics. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

To determine if listeners can accurately identify various environmental sounds, a total of 40 sounds, including animal, inanimate, musical, and human sounds, were recorded, randomly arranged on a master tape, and presented to 30 judges for identification. Analysis indicated that, in general, listeners can accurately identify environmental sounds. However, their accuracy was not equal for all four classes of sounds investigated: human sounds yielded the highest accuracy, followed by musical and inanimate sounds, and animal sounds were least accurately identified. Implications and suggestions for research are discussed.

To determine the effect of speakers' attempts to disguise their voices on listeners' accuracy in age judgments, 26 speakers, 13 females and 13 males, recorded six sentences under three conditions: (a) in a normal manner, actually were, and (c) in a manner in which they attempted to sound much older than they actually were. Three master tapes were constructed, one for each of the three conditions. A total of 20 judges, 10 females and 10 males, participated in three sessions, one for each of the three master tapes. In each session they were asked to judge the age of the speaker of each sentence and, using a seven-point confidence rating scale, to indicate the over-all confidence in their judgments at the end of each session. Although a majority of speakers yielded age estimates consistent with the conditions of intended disguise, the differences in listeners' estimates among all three conditions were relatively small. Moreover, differences between speakers' actual ages and listeners' age estimates in the control condition were also small. Implications of the findings and suggestions for research are discussed.