The imitated voice - a problem for voice line-ups?

Abstract

This paper investigates whether imitation can pose a problem for speaker discrimination within the line-up. The voice chosen for the experiment was that of a well-known Swedish politician. A professional imitator provided an imitation of the voice samples presented. Eight other voices were used in the experiments. Four groups heard a series of different open-test line-ups. Two of the groups were asked to identify the Swedish politician: one solely from memory, one after hearing his voice. The remaining two groups heard a sample of the voice they were to identify: one group heard the professional imitation and the other the natural voice of the imitator. Results indicate that the listeners are able to discriminate between the real voice and the imitation when both are present. However, the imitation leads to 100 per cent speaker misidentification in the worse case.