Assessment of the presence -- and especially the level -- of intoxication is difficult at best. Many of the test vehicles (especially those which utilized fixed equipment) Often are unavailable when most needed. Yet countless judgments of drunkenness must be made during any given period by professional of many types. One untapped source of information is that of the speech-voice correlates of intoxication. Information of this type is badly needed because manu of the cited judgments already are being made on this basis, even though the actual relationships are unknown. Hence, they are often in error (sometimes tragically so) and, in any case, they are based on lay stereotypes. Some controlled. The need for appropriate study is easily established but the question remains: can it be carried out with the necessary breadth and precision? This research program will address these, plus related issues. Specifically it is structured in an attempt to discover if there are changes in motor-speech characteristics which correlate with intoxication resulting from ethyl alcohol consumption. The proposed experiments are aimed at the acquisition of perceptual, acoustic/temporal and physiological data from population of sober, mildly intoxicated and severely intoxicated individual exhibiting a variety of drinking histories; they will be carried out for the purpose of developing usable intoxication identification procedures/profiles. In addition, populations of listeners will be evaluated i order to determine the accuracy with which they can isolate and identify the speech of individuals who are intoxicated. Furthermore, four acoustic/temporal vectors (within the speech signal) will be applied to speech samples obtained form populations of individuals who are sober and who exhibit the several levels of intoxication, and changes in the values noted. The stability of the individual speech behavior also will be examined and an attempt made to evaluate the validity (and reliability) of using such analyses to develop a phonetic understanding of intoxication level.
| Hollien, Harry; Harnsberger, James D; Martin, Camilo A et al. (2009) Perceiving the effects of ethanol intoxication on voice. J Voice 23:552-9 |
