Talker familiarity and the accommodation of talker variability

A fundamental problem in speech perception is how (or whether) listeners accommodate variability the way talkers produce speech. One view of cope with this that talker differences are normalized – a mapping between talker-specific characteristics and phonetic categories computed such recognized context talker’s vocal characteristics. Consistent view, process more slowly when changes randomly than remains constant. An alternative based on auditory exemplars memory clustered around linguistic allow talker-independent perception. become efficient at processing after voice identification training. We asked whether efficiency would increase familiarity by testing extremely familiar (family members), newly (based laboratory training), unfamiliar talkers. also reduce need for normalization. As predicted, (word recognition noise) increased (unfamiliar < trained-on family). However, we observed constant cost even pairs family members. discuss normalization exemplar theories might account these results, constraints results impose theoretical accounts constancy.