The Speaker Identification Ability of Blind and Sighted Listeners

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XXVI

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2. The sensory compensation hypothesis

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 27-29

3. Prior research on blind listeners’ auditory abilities

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 31-47

4. Possible influences on human speaker identification

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 49-56

5. Issues to consider when creating a voice lineup

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 57-58

6. Hypotheses for the experiment

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 59-59

7. Speaker identification experiment

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 61-71

8. Results

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 73-96

9. Interview with visually impaired forensic audio analysts

   • Almut Braun

   Pages 97-98

10. Discussion

    • Almut Braun

    Pages 99-113

11. Conclusions

    • Almut Braun

    Pages 115-117

12. Future research

    • Almut Braun

    Pages 119-119

13. Back Matter

    Pages 121-159

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Almut Braun carried out forensic phonetic speaker identification experiments (voice lineups) with 306 lay listeners. Blind listeners significantly outperformed sighted listeners when the speech recordings were presented in studio quality. For recordings in mobile phone quality or of whispering voices, blind and sighted listeners achieved similar results. The data can be used as reference material for real cases with blind earwitnesses. Furthermore, it is discussed whether blind individuals are particularly suitable to work as forensic audio analysts for law enforcement agencies.

• Speaker Recognition
• Voice Lineup
• Voice Parade
• Blindness
• Forensic Phonetics

• University of York , York, United Kingdom

  Almut Braun

Almut Braun was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Phonetics at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. She works currently as a Research Associate in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York, UK.

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