Perceptual similarity judgments of voices: Effects of talker and listener language, vocal source acoustics, and time-reversal

Listeners demonstrate reliable perceptual biases favoring voices speaking their native language versus those speaking a foreign language. This “language-familiarity effect” for voice processing has been found even for perceptual similarity judgments: Voices speaking listeners’ native language sound less alike, even when those recordings have been rendered incomprehensible via time-reversal. Here, we sought to replicate and extend this finding of linguistic effects on voice similarity. Native English- and Mandarin-speaking listeners (both N = 40) rated the perceptual similarity of voices speaking English or Mandarin (both N = 20) for either time-reversed or forward speech. Both listener groups tended to find Mandarin-speaking voices more dissimilar, but this effect was reduced for English-speaking listeners, especially for forward speech. Perceptual similarity judgments of voices were always highly correlated between listener groups and between forward/time-reversed speech. Acoustic measurements (voice fun...