This project comprised two stages. As a first step, a survey was conducted among international forensic experts with questions specifically related to voice quality (VQ). This survey was intended to inform current practices in the assessment of VQ and to detect issues and difficulties, as found in real casework. In a second step, different pilot experiments were tested, and eventually a simplified computer-based perceptual protocol for the evaluation of VQ was proposed. The main goal was to provide a simplified, yet reliable and validated, perceptual protocol that could be used by the international community of forensic phoneticians when they have to describe a speaker in terms of his/her VQ, and/or when required to compare two or more voices using an auditory approach.

PI: Eugenia San Segundo

Collaborators: Anders Eriksson (Stockholm University) and Plinio Barbosa (State University of Campinas, Brazil)

Dates: 2016-2018

Funder: International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA)

Amount: 1,650 EUR