Assessing the abilities of phonetically untrained listeners to determine pitch and speaker accent in unfamiliar voices

It is sometimes the case that a victim of a crime will never see the perpetrator’s face, but will be exposed to his or her voice. This could occur in situations such as masked robberies, telephone fraud, or the receipt of bomb threats via phone or voicemail. In such cases, attempts can be made by the police or intelligence services to get the witness or victim to describe the voice of the offender. However, there is a high likelihood that a given earwitness will lack the linguistic expertise and technical vocabulary of the kind used by trained phoneticians when they describe voices. One question that arises from this problem is whether phonetically untrained listeners have the ability, using verbal means, to accurately capture different aspects of speakers’ voices. This paper presents an experiment in which a group of listeners were tasked with assessing how ‘high-pitched’ the voices of 12 speakers were, along with providing a description of each speaker’s accent. These assessments were then compared to measured Fundamental Frequency (F0) values and prior knowledge of the speakers’ accents in order to assess listener performance. The results suggest that while some listeners have the ability to make reliable judgements of relative vocal pitch, the overall correlations between measured (F0) and perceived pitch were weak. With regard to accent, the results suggest that the more unfamiliar a speaker’s accent is to the listener, perhaps owing to the geographical distance of the area where the accent is spoken from the listener’s place of origin, the harder it will be for the listener to accurately describe that accent. We argue that testing the abilities of earwitnesses to assess aspects of speakers’ voices before their descriptions are used further would be a useful safeguard against the use of potentially inaccurate or erroneous earwitness evidence in police investigations

Perception of threat and intent to harm from vocal and facial cues

What constitutes a “threatening tone of voice”? There is currently little research exploring how listeners infer threat, or the intention to cause harm, from speakers’ voices. Here, we investigated the influence of key linguistic variables on these evaluations (Study 1). Results showed a trend for voices perceived to be lower in pitch, particularly those of male speakers, to be evaluated as sounding more threatening and conveying greater intent to harm. We next investigated the evaluation of multimodal stimuli comprising voices and faces varying in perceived dominance (Study 2). Visual information about the speaker’s face had a significant effect on threat and intent ratings. In both experiments, we observed a relatively low level of agreement among individual listeners’ evaluations, emphasising idiosyncrasy in the ways in which threat and intent-to-harm are perceived. This research provides a basis for the perceptual experience of a “threatening tone of voice,” along with an exploration of vocal and facial cue integration in social evaluation

The role of face and voice cues in predicting the outcome of student representative elections

First impressions formed after seeing someone’s face or hearing their voice can affect many social decisions, including voting in political elections. Despite the many studies investigating the independent contribution of face and voice cues to electoral success, their integration is still not well understood. Here, we examine a novel electoral context, student representative ballots, allowing us to test the generalisability of previous studies. We also examine the independent contributions of visual, auditory and audiovisual information to social judgements of the candidates, and their relationship to election outcomes. Results showed that perceived trustworthiness was the only trait significantly related to election success. These findings contrast with previous reports on the importance of perceived competence using audio or visual cues only in the context of national political elections. The present study highlights the role of real-world context and emphasises the importance of using ecologically valid stimulus presentation in understanding real-life social judgement

Methods for the study of accent bias and access to elite professions

Fair access to employment is vital for improving social mobility in Britain today. As language is not explicitly protected by the Equality Act 2010, accent can become a proxy for other forms of discrimination at key junctures for social mobility such as recruiting to elite professions. The Accent Bias and Fair Access in Britain project (www.accentbiasbritain.org) aims to assess prevailing attitudes to accents in Britain and to assess the extent to which accent-based prejudice affects elite professions. In this article we focus specifically on methodological innovations in this project, rather than detailed results. We describe our approach to four challenges in the study of accent bias: how to assess whether accent preferences actively interfere with the perception of expertise in candidates’ utterances; how to more precisely identify sources of bias in individuals; new technologies for real-time rating to establish whether specific ‘shibboleths’ trigger shifts in evaluation; and how to assess the efficacy of interventions for combating implicit bias. We suggest integrating best practices from the fields of linguistics, social psychology, and management studies to develop sound interdisciplinary methods for the study of language, discrimination, and social mobility

Latent regulatory potential of human-specific repetitive elements

At least half of the human genome is derived from repetitive elements, which are often lineage specific and silenced by a variety of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. Using a transchromosomic mouse strain that transmits an almost complete single copy of human chromosome 21 via the female germline, we show that a heterologous regulatory environment can transcriptionally activate transposon-derived human regulatory regions. In the mouse nucleus, hundreds of locations on human chromosome 21 newly associate with activating histone modifications in both somatic and germline tissues, and influence the gene expression of nearby transcripts. These regions are enriched with primate and human lineage-specific transposable elements, and their activation corresponds to changes in DNA methylation at CpG dinucleotides. This study reveals the latent regulatory potential of the repetitive human genome and illustrates the species specificity of mechanisms that control it

Suicide inhibition of alpha-oxamine synthases:structures of the covalent adducts of 8-amino-7-oxononanoate synthase with trifluoroalanine

The suicide inhibition of the α-oxamine synthases by the substrate analog, L-trifluoroalanine was investigated. The inhibition resulted in the formation of a complex with loss of all three fluorine atoms. Decarboxylation and loss of fluoride occurred immediately after aldimine formation. The inherent flexibility could allow the difluorinated intermediate complex to adopt a suitable conformation. Decarboxylation in the normal mechanism occurs after formation of the ketoacid intermediate.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

The Seroepidemiology of Haemophilus influenzae Type B Prior to Introduction of an Immunization Programme in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) is now recognized as an important pathogen in Asia. To evaluate disease susceptibility, and as a marker of Hib transmission before routine immunization was introduced in Kathmandu, 71 participants aged 7 months-77 years were recruited and 15 cord blood samples were collected for analysis of anti-polyribosylribitol phosphate antibody levels by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Only 20% of children under 5 years old had levels considered protective (>0.15 µg/ml), rising to 83% of 15-54 year-olds. Prior to introduction of Hib vaccine in Kathmandu, the majority of young children were susceptible to disease