The Long-Term Spectral Measurement of Voice Quality as a Social and Personality Marker: A Review

Abstract

As a long-term vocal feature, voice quality can function as a marker of individuality, be a carrier of personality characteristics and affect, as well as being characteristic of social and ethnic groups. In measuring voice quality acoustically, therefore, the most appropriate measure is one that reflects this long-term nature, particularly when perceptual judgments are to be related to the acoustic values. One potentially useful long-term acoustic measure of voice quality is the long-term average spectrum. This paper reviews the success of the long-term average spectrum in discriminating voice qualities, and the consequent usefulness to researchers working in such areas as phonetics, communications, cross-cultural studies, personality and the social psychology of language.