ASR-based development of challenging speaker discrimination tests

We report our ongoing efforts towards the development of challenging speaker discrimination tests. Our goal is to establish highly sensitive tests that enable characterization of individual differences in voice processing skills. Such tools are required but lacking for the identification of so-called “voice super-recognizers” – individuals with superior voice processing ability – who could aid criminal investigations involving audio material. To find such individuals we manipulated test difficulty using an ASR and delta F0-based stimuli selection method. Independent groups of participants performed 2-alternative forced choice voice discrimination tests of stimulus pairs selected either randomly, or systematically based on inter-item similarity. On
average, performance was significantly higher for the prior (80.0%) as compared to the latter (68.8%) test. Thus, we have established a method to manipulate task difficulty in speaker discrimination tests. We will further validate and extend our method to include a wider range of audio material implemented as a within-subject design.