This study was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq, grant no. 307010/2022-8 for the first author, and grant no. 302194/2019-3 for the second author. The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the participants of this research for their generous cooperation and invaluable contributions.

Prosodic-Acoustic Features and L2 Speech Production for Forensic Applications

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

The current protocol presents a novelty in the field of (forensic) phonetics. It is divided into two phases: one based on production (acoustic analysis) and one based on perception (judgement analysis). The production analysis phase comprises the Data preparation and Forced alignment, Realignment, and Automatic extraction of prosodic-acoustic features besides the statistics. This protocol connects the stage of data collection to the data analysis in a faster and more efficient way than the traditional protocols based on ...

The accent is a salient and dynamic aspect of communication and fluency, both in the native language (L1) and in a foreign language (L2)1. Foreign accent represents the L2 phonetic features of a target language, and it can change (over time)in response to the speaker&#8217;s L2 experience, speaking style, input quality, exposition, among other variables. A foreign accent can be quantified as a (scalar) degree of difference between L2 speech produced by a foreign speaker and a local or reference accent of the target language2,3,4,5.
This research aims to examine both the prosodic-acoustic features and the perceptual correlates of foreign-accented English and foreign-accented Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as well as to check to which extent the speakers&#39; productions of foreign and native accents are correlated to the listeners&#39; perception. Prior research in the forensic field has demonstrated the robustness of vowels and consonants in foreign accent identification as either being stable for a long-term analysis of an individual (The Lo Case6) or referring to the high ID accuracy of a speaker (The Lindbergh Case7). However, the exploration of prosodic-acoustic features based on duration, fundamental frequency (f0, i.e., the acoustic correlate of pitch), intensity, and voice quality (VQ) has gained increasing attention8,9. Thus, the choice for prosodic-acoustic features in this study represents a promising avenue in the forensic phonetics field8,10,11,12,13.
The present research is supported by studies dedicated to foreign accents as a form of voice disguise in forensic cases14,15, as well as in the preparation of voice lineups for speaker recognition16,17. For instance, speech rate played an important role in the identification of German, Italian, Japanese, and Brazilian speakers of English18,19,20,21,22. Besides speech rate, long-term spectral and f0 features challenge L2 proficient speakers with familiarity with the target language because the brain and cognitive bases suffer a deficit in memory, attention, and emotion, reflecting in the speaker&#39;s phonetic performance during long speech turns23. The view of foreign accents in the forensic field is that the definition of what really sounds like a foreign accent depends much on the listener&#39;s unfamiliarity rather than having a none-to-extreme degree of foreign-accented speech24.
In the perceptual domain, a common forensic tool used since the mid-1990s for criminals&#39; recognition is the Voice Lineup (auditory recognition), which is analogous to visual recognition used to identify a perpetrator in a crime scene16,25. In a voice lineup, the suspect&#39;s voice is presented alongside foils-voices similar in sociolinguistic aspects such as age, sex, geographical location, dialect, and cultural status-for identification by an earwitness. The success or failure of a voice lineup will depend on the number of voice samples and the sample durations25,26. Furthermore, for real-world samples, it is considered that the audio quality consistently impacts the accuracy of voice recognition. Poor audio quality can distort the unique characteristics of a voice27. In the case of voice similarity, fine phonetic detail based on f0 can confuse the listener during voice recognition28,29. Such acoustic features extend beyond f0 and encompass elements of duration, and spectral features of intensity and VQ30. This view of multiple prosodic features is crucial in the context of forensic voice comparison to ensure accurate speaker identification9,14,15,29,31.
In summary, studies in forensic phonetics have shown some variation regarding foreign accent identification over the last decades. On the one hand, a foreign accent does not seem to affect the process of identifying a speaker32,33 (especially if the speaker is unfamiliar with the target foreign accent34). On the other hand, there are findings in the opposite direction12,34,35.

<table><tbody><tr><td>CreateLineup</td><td>Personal collection</td><td>#</td><td>Script for praat for voice lineups preparation</td></tr><tr><td>Dell I3 (with solid-state drive - SSD)&amp;nbsp;</td><td>Dell</td><td>#</td><td>Laptop computer</td></tr><tr><td>Praat</td><td>Paul Boersma &amp;amp; David Weenink</td><td>#</td><td>Software for phonetic analysis</td></tr><tr><td>Python 3</td><td>Python Software Foundation</td><td>#</td><td>Interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language&amp;nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td>R</td><td>The R Project for Statistical Computing</td><td>#</td><td>Programming language for stattistical computing</td></tr><tr><td>Shure Beta SM7B</td><td>Shure</td><td>#</td><td>Microphone</td></tr><tr><td>SpeechRhythmExtractor</td><td>Personal collection</td><td>#</td><td>Script for praat for automatic extraction of acoustic features</td></tr><tr><td>SurveyMonkey</td><td>SurveyMonkey Inc.</td><td>#</td><td>Assemble of free customizable surveys, as well as a suite of back-end programs that include data analysis, sample selection, debiasing, and data representation.</td></tr><tr><td>Tascam DR-100 MKII</td><td>Tascam</td><td>#</td><td>Digital voice recorder</td></tr><tr><td>The Munich Automatic Segmentation System MAUS</td><td>University of Munich</td><td>#</td><td>Forced-aligner of audio (.wav) and linguistic information (.txt) files</td></tr><tr><td>VVUnitAligner</td><td>Personal collection</td><td>#</td><td>Script for praat for automatic realignment and post-processing of phonetic units</td></tr></tbody></table>

foreign accent and forensic speaker identification in voice lineups: the influence of acoustic features based on prosody

This research aims to examine both the prosodic-acoustic features and the perceptual correlates of foreign-accented English and foreign-accented Brazilian Portuguese and check how the speakers&#39; productions of foreign and native accents are correlated to the listeners&#39; perception. In the Methodology, we conducted a speech production procedure with a group of American speakers of L2 Brazilian Portuguese and a group of Brazilian speakers of L2 English, and a speech perception procedure in which we performed voice lineups for both languages.For the speech production statistical analysis, we ran Generalized Additive Models to evaluate the effect of the language groups on each class (metric or prosodic-acoustic) of features controlled for the smoothing effect of the covariate(s) of the opposite class. For the speech perception statistical analysis, we ran a Kruskal-Wallis test and a post-hoc Dunn&#39;s test to evaluate the effect of the voices of the lineups on the scores judged by the listeners. We nevertheless conducted acoustic (voice) similarity tests based on Cosine and Euclidean distances. Results showed significant acoustic differences between the language groups in terms of variability of the f0, duration, and voice quality. For the lineups, the results indicated that prosodic features of f0, intensity, and voice quality correlated to the listeners&#39; perceived judgments.

Results for speech production 
In this section, we described the performance of the statistically significant prosodic-acoustic features and rhythm metrics. Such prosodic features were speech, articulation, and pause rates, which are related to duration, and shimmer, which is related to voice quality. The rhythm metrics were standard deviation (SD) of syllable duration, SD of consonant, SD of vocalic or consonantal duration, and the variation coefficient of syllable duration (see the Supplem...

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

This research aimed to make a comparison between L1-L2-English and L1-L2 Portuguese to check how much the effect of a foreign accent accounts for both metrics and prosodic-acoustic parameters, as well as for the choice of the target voice in a voice lineup.

This research aims to examine both the prosodic-acoustic features and the perceptual correlates of foreign-accented English and foreign-accented Brazilian ...

foreign-accent-forensic-speaker-identification-voice-lineups

Universidad San Sebastian

Research

JoVE Journal

Behavior

374 Views.  State University of Paraíba (Universidade Estadual da Paraíba). This research aimed to make a comparison between L1-L2-English and L1-L2 Portuguese to check how much the effect of a foreign accent accounts for both metrics and prosodic-acoustic parameters, as well as for the choice of the target voice in a voice lineup.

Video: Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

A Procedure to Study the Effect of Prolonged Food Restriction on Heroin Seeking in Abstinent Rats

In human drug addicts, exposure to drug-associated cues or environments that were previously associated with drug taking can trigger relapse during abstinence. Moreover, various environmental challenges can exacerbate this effect, as well as increase ongoing drug intake.
The procedure we describe here highlights the impact of a common environmental challenge, food restriction, on drug craving that is expressed as an augmentation of drug seeking in abstinent rats.
Rats are implanted with chronic intravenous i.v. catheters, and then trained to press a lever for i.v. heroin over a period of 10-12 days. Following the heroin self-administration phase the rats are removed from the operant conditioning chambers and housed in the animal care facility for a period of at least 14 days. While one group is maintained under unrestricted access to food (sated group), a second group (FDR group) is exposed to a mild food restriction regimen that results in their body weights maintained at 90% of their nonrestricted body weight. On day 14 of food restriction the rats are transferred back to the drug-training environment, and a drug-seeking test is run under extinction conditions (i.e.&#160;lever presses do not result in heroin delivery).
The procedure presented here results in a highly robust augmentation of heroin seeking on test day in the food restricted rats. In addition, compared to the acute food deprivation manipulations we have used before, the current procedure is a more clinically relevant model for the impact of caloric restriction on drug seeking. Moreover, it might be closer to the human condition as the rats are not required to go through an extinction-training phase before the drug-seeking test, which is an integral component of the popular reinstatement procedure.

A procedure that allows a demonstration of robust augmentation of drug seeking in food-restricted rats is described. Following heroin self-administration training, rats go through an abstinence period, in a drug-free environment, during which they are mildly food restricted. Drug seeking is then tested in the drug-associated environment.

In human drug addicts, exposure to drug-associated cues or environments that were previously associated with drug taking can trigger relapse during ...

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior

Kinesthetic awareness is important to successfully navigate the environment. When we interact with our daily surroundings, some aspects of movement are deliberately planned, while others spontaneously occur below conscious awareness. The deliberate component of this dichotomy has been studied extensively in several contexts, while the spontaneous component remains largely under-explored. Moreover, how perceptual processes modulate these movement classes is still unclear. In particular, a currently debated issue is whether the visuomotor system is governed by the spatial percept produced by a visual illusion or whether it is not affected by the illusion and is governed instead by the veridical percept. Bistable percepts such as 3D depth inversion illusions (DIIs) provide an excellent context to study such interactions and balance, particularly when used in combination with reach-to-grasp movements. In this study, a methodology is developed that uses a DII to clarify the role of top-down processes on motor action, particularly exploring how reaches toward a target on a DII are affected in both deliberate and spontaneous movement domains.

It is unclear how top-down signals from the ventral visual stream affect movement. We developed a paradigm to test motor behavior towards a target on a 3D depth inversion illusion. Significant differences are reported in both deliberate, goal-directed movements and automatic actions under illusory and veridical viewing conditions.

Kinesthetic awareness is important to successfully navigate the environment. When we interact with our daily surroundings, some aspects of movement are ...

Irrelevant Stimuli and Action Control: Analyzing the Influence of Ignored Stimuli via the Distractor-Response Binding Paradigm

Selection tasks in which simple stimuli (e.g. letters) are presented and a target stimulus has to be selected against one or more distractor stimuli are frequently used in the research on human action control. One important question in these settings is how distractor stimuli, competing with the target stimulus for a response, influence actions. The distractor-response binding paradigm can be used to investigate this influence. It is particular useful to separately analyze response retrieval and distractor inhibition effects. Computer-based experiments are used to collect the data (reaction times and error rates). In a number of sequentially presented pairs of stimulus arrays (prime-probe design), participants respond to targets while ignoring distractor stimuli. Importantly, the factors response relation in the arrays of each pair (repetition vs. change) and distractor relation (repetition vs. change) are varied orthogonally. The repetition of the same distractor then has a different effect depending on response relation (repetition vs. change) between arrays. This result pattern can be explained by response retrieval due to distractor repetition. In addition, distractor inhibition effects are indicated by a general advantage due to distractor repetition. The described paradigm has proven useful to determine relevant parameters for response retrieval effects on human action.

The distractor-response binding paradigm is described. It can be used to shed light on the influence irrelevant stimuli, competing with targets for a response, can have on human action. Both response retrieval effects and distractor inhibition effects can be analyzed within the paradigm.

Selection tasks in which simple stimuli (e.g. letters) are presented and a target stimulus has to be selected against one or more distractor stimuli are ...

Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm

The paradigm detailed in this manuscript describes an applied experimental method based on real police investigations during which an eyewitness or victim to a crime may create from memory a holistic facial composite of the culprit with the assistance of a police operator. The aim is that the composite is recognized by someone who believes that they know the culprit. For this paradigm, participants view a culprit actor on video and following a delay, participant-witnesses construct a holistic system facial composite. Controls do not construct a composite. From a series of arrays of computer-generated, but realistic faces, the holistic system construction method primarily requires participant-witnesses to select the facial images most closely meeting their memory of the culprit. Variation between faces in successive arrays is reduced until ideally the final image possesses a close likeness to the culprit. Participant-witness directed tools can also alter facial features, configurations between features and holistic properties (e.g., age, distinctiveness, skin tone), all within a whole face context. The procedure is designed to closely match the holistic manner by which humans&#8217; process faces. On completion, based on their memory of the culprit, ratings of composite-culprit similarity are collected from the participant-witnesses. Similar ratings are collected from culprit-acquaintance assessors, as a marker of composite recognition likelihood. Following a further delay, all participants &#8212; including the controls&#160;&#8212; attempt to identify the culprit in either a culprit-present or culprit-absent video line-up, to replicate circumstances in which the police have located the correct culprit, or an innocent suspect. Data of control and participant-witness line-up outcomes are presented, demonstrating the positive influence of holistic composite construction on identification accuracy. Correlational analyses are conducted to measure the relationship between assessor and participant-witness composite-culprit similarity ratings, delay, identification accuracy, and confidence to examine which factors influence video line-up outcomes.

This applied experimental paradigm replicates circumstances by which an eyewitness to a real crime may create a holistic facial composite of the culprit from memory, and then attempt to identify the culprit from a video line-up containing the culprit or one in which he or she is not present.

The paradigm detailed in this manuscript describes an applied experimental method based on real police investigations during which an eyewitness or victim ...

A Method for Evaluating the Reinforcing Properties of Ethanol in Rats without Water Deprivation, Saccharin Fading or Extended Access Training

Operant oral self-administration methods are commonly used to study the reinforcing properties of ethanol in animals. However, the standard methods require saccharin/sucrose fading, water deprivation and/or extended training to initiate operant responding in rats. This paper describes a novel and efficient method to quickly initiate operant responding for ethanol that is convenient for experimenters and does not require water deprivation or saccharin/sucrose fading, thus eliminating the potential confound of using sweeteners in ethanol operant self-administration studies. With this method, Wistar rats typically acquire and maintain self-administration of a 20% ethanol solution in less than two weeks of training. Furthermore, blood ethanol concentrations and rewards are positively correlated for a 30 min self-administration session. Moreover, naltrexone, an FDA-approved medication for alcohol dependence that has been shown to suppress ethanol self-administration in rodents, dose-dependently decreases alcohol intake and motivation to consume alcohol for rats self-administering 20% ethanol, thus validating the use of this new method to study the reinforcing properties of alcohol in rats.

This protocol describes a novel and efficient method to quickly initiate operant responding for ethanol in rats that, contrary to standard methods, does not require water deprivation or saccharin/sucrose fading to initiate responding.

Operant oral self-administration methods are commonly used to study the reinforcing properties of ethanol in animals. However, the standard methods ...

Driving Under the Influence: How Music Listening Affects Driving Behaviors

Car driving is a daily activity for many individuals in modern societies. Drivers often listen to music while driving. The method presented here investigates how listening to music influences driving behaviors. A driving simulation was selected because it offers both a well-controlled environment and a good level of ecological validity. Driving behaviors were assessed through a car-following task. In practice, participants were instructed to follow a lead vehicle as they would do in real life. The lead vehicle speed changed over time requiring constant speed adjustments for the participants. The inter-vehicular time was used to assess driving behaviors. To complement the driving behaviors, the subjective mood and physiological level of arousal were also collected. As such, the results collected using this method offer insights on both the human internal state (i.e., subjective mood and physiological arousal) and driving behaviors in the car following task.

Here, we present a protocol to assess driving behaviors while following a vehicle in a simulated driving environment. The presented protocol is used to compare the impact of different auditory backgrounds on driving behaviors.

Car driving is a daily activity for many individuals in modern societies. Drivers often listen to music while driving. The method presented here ...

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is currently a paucity of research exploring how preschool children with autism understand sentences using different types of cues. The mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension remains largely unclear. The present study presents a protocol to examine the sentence comprehension abilities of preschool children with autism. More specifically, a visual world paradigm of eye-tracking is used to explore the moment-to-moment sentence comprehension in the children. The paradigm has multiple advantages. First, it is sensitive to the time course of sentence comprehension and thus can provide rich information about how sentence comprehension unfolds over time. Second, it requires minimal task and communication demands, so it is ideal for testing children with autism. To further minimize the computational burden of children, the present study measures eye movements that arise as automatic responses to linguistic input rather than measuring eye movements that accompany conscious responses to spoken instructions.

We present a protocol to examine the use of morphological cues during real-time sentence comprehension by children with autism.

Sentence comprehension relies on the ability to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. However, there is ...

Assessing the Influence of Personality on Sensitivity to Magnetic Fields in Zebrafish

To orient themselves in their environment, animals integrate a wide array of external cues, which interact with several internal factors, such as personality. Here, we describe a behavioral protocol designed for the study of the influence of zebrafish personality on their orientation response to multiple external environmental cues, specifically water currents and magnetic fields. This protocol aims to understand whether proactive or reactive zebrafish display different rheotactic thresholds (i.e., the flow speed at which the fish start swimming upstream) when the surrounding magnetic field changes its direction. To identify zebrafish with the same personality, fish are introduced in the dark half of a tank connected with a narrow opening to a bright half. Only proactive fish explore the novel, bright environment. Reactive fish do not exit the dark half of the tank. A swimming tunnel with low flow rates is used to determine the rheotactic threshold. We describe two setups to control the magnetic field in the tunnel, in the range of the earth&#8217;s magnetic field intensity: one that controls the magnetic field along the flow direction (one dimension) and one that allows a three-axial control of the magnetic field. Fish are filmed while experiencing a stepwise increase of the flow speed in the tunnel under different magnetic fields. Data on the orientation behavior are collected through a video-tracking procedure and applied to a logistic model to allow the determination of the rheotactic threshold. We report representative results collected from shoaling zebrafish. Specifically, these demonstrate that only reactive, prudent fish show variations of the rheotactic threshold when the magnetic field varies in its direction, while proactive fish do not respond to magnetic field changes. This methodology can be applied to the study of magnetic sensitivity and rheotactic behavior of many aquatic species, both displaying solitary or shoaling swimming strategies.

We describe a behavioral protocol designed to assess how zebrafish&#8217;s personalities influence their response to water currents and weak magnetic fields. Fishes with the same personalities are separated based on their explorative behavior. Then, their rheotactic orientation behavior in a swimming tunnel with a low flow rate and under different magnetic conditions is observed.

To orient themselves in their environment, animals integrate a wide array of external cues, which interact with several internal factors, such as ...

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

The confounding factors of unexpectedness and semantic integration difficulty naturally residing in anomalous sentences in language studies make it difficult to determine the underlying processing mechanism of ERP components. Unlike the traditional static approach of manipulating expectancy through corpus frequency or cloze probability, this protocol proposes a dynamic method to enhance participants&#39; expectancy for rarely-met anomalous sentences by multiple repetitions while maintaining their semantic integration difficulties. To address the time cost increase resulting from multiple repetitions, this protocol proposes to repeat only the strictly simplified core structure extracted from the anomalous sentence before presenting the semantically enriched, much more informative complete anomalous sentence containing the anomalous core structure to reinitiate the semantic integration processing. The complete anomalous sentence elicited a P600 effect. It suggests that the participants did not give up processing the anomalous information after repetitions and the same semantic integration difficulty was successfully reinitiated. Importantly, the representative experimental results reveal that the greatly attenuated N400 effect caused by multiple repetitions was not recovered by the follow-up reinitiated semantic integration difficulty. It suggests that the attenuated N400 effect should be mainly attributed to the enhancement of expectancy for anomalous information by multiple repetitions. The experimental results show that this method can effectively enhance participants&#39; expectancy for anomalous sentences while retaining the semantic integration difficulty.

We present a protocol to dissociate the intertwining factors of integrative difficulty and unexpectedness in semantically anomalous sentences by applying multiple repetitions to enhance participant&#39;s expectancy for anomalous sentences. The dissociation helps to investigate the major contributor of elicited event-related potentials (ERP) effects such as N400 in language studies.

The confounding factors of unexpectedness and semantic integration difficulty naturally residing in anomalous sentences in language studies make it ...

EEG Study on Recognizing Familiar Speakers in Expressive Speech

Memorization-Based Training and Testing Paradigm for Robust Vocal Identity Recognition in Expressive Speech Using Event-Related Potentials Analysis

Recognizing familiar speakers from vocal streams is a fundamental aspect of human verbal communication. However, it remains unclear how listeners can still discern the speaker's identity in expressive speech. This study develops a memorization-based individual speaker identity recognition approach and an accompanying electroencephalogram (EEG) data analysis pipeline, which monitors how listeners recognize familiar speakers and tell unfamiliar ones apart. EEG data captures online cognitive processes during new versus old speaker distinction based on voice, offering a real-time measure of brain activity, overcoming limits of reaction times and accuracy measurements. The paradigm comprises three steps: listeners establish associations between three voices and their names (training); listeners indicate the name corresponding to a voice from three candidates (checking); listeners distinguish between three old and three new speaker voices in a two-alternative forced-choice task (testing). The speech prosody in testing was either confident or doubtful. EEG data were collected using a 64-channel EEG system, followed by preprocessing and imported into RStudio for ERP and statistical analysis and MATLAB for brain topography. Results showed an enlarged late positive component (LPC) was elicited in the old-talker compared to the new-talker condition in the 400-850 ms window in the Pz and other wider range of electrodes in both prosodies. Yet, the old/new effect was robust in central and posterior electrodes for doubtful prosody perception, whereas the anterior, central, and posterior electrodes are for confident prosody condition. This study proposes that this experiment design can serve as a reference for investigating speaker-specific cue-binding effects in various scenarios (e.g., anaphoric expression) and pathologies in patients like phonagnosia.

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception

The study introduces a training-testing paradigm to investigate old/new effects of event-related potentials in confident and doubtful prosodic scenarios. Data reveals an enhanced late positive component between 400-850 ms at Pz and other electrodes. This pipeline can explore factors beyond speech prosody and their influence on cue-binding target identification.

Recognizing familiar speakers from vocal streams is a fundamental aspect of human verbal communication. However, it remains unclear how listeners can ...