Perception of vocal tract tension: exploring possible prosodic correlates

A recent study involving the perceptual analysis of 24 speakers by two raters (San Segundo & Mompean, 2017) revealed a slight inter-rater agreement in the assessment of vocal tract tension. In the current investigation several prosodic measures related to intensity and durational variability have been extracted per speaker with the aim of testing whether they correlate with the perceptual ratings for VT tension provided by the two trained raters. The correlation test showed a significant positive correlation between the ratings of Rater 1 and the variable varcoM (mean intensity variability across syllables). In contrast, the ratings of Rater 2 correlated positive and significantly with two rhythmic measures related to mean consonant duration. These results suggest that the acoustic cues playing a role in each rater’s auditory judgements are not the same. The different salience of intensity and durational characteristics should be taken into account in future studies on voice quality perception.