Effects of Signal-Independent Factors in Speech Perception

The present study is an investigation of how lexical status, frequency, and neighborhood density affect the speech recognition in noise, through a replication and an extended analysis of the first experiment in Boothroyd and Nittrouer (1988). The j-factor model, proposed as a metric of context effects insensitive to overall performance level, is used to quantify the effects of these factors. All of these factors are measured with the j-factor model. The effect of neighborhood density is particularly interesting because it is primarily due to the first two segments

300 Hello's: Properties of Initial Respondent Greetings and Response Propensities in Telephone Surveys

Abstract. Current theoretical perspectives on the survey participation decision suggest that interviewers attuned to various verbal and nonverbal cues of sample persons attain higher cooperation rates. Further, in spite of limited cues that can be communicated through the audio channel, it has been observed that centralized telephone interviewers vary greatly in their individual cooperation rates. This paper is based on digital recordings of thousands of initial interactions between sample persons and interviewers in random-digit-dialed surveys of US households. For a subsample of these recordings listener ratings were made of the initial greeting by the person answering the telephone of the sample number. The ratings of these greetings are compared to the rate of cooperation on the given contact. Relationships between interviewer historical cooperation rates and their initial greeting in response to various sample person greetings are examined