Estimation of Speakers' Weight and Height from Speech: A Re-Analysis of Data from Multiple Studies by Lass and Colleagues

Abstract

Research on identification of speakers' weight and height from their speech has yielded controversial results. Conclusions from a series of reports conducted by Lass and colleagues must be interpreted with caution because they are based on comparisons of only two types of data, mean of actual values and mean of estimated values. Cohen and others clearly demonstrated that this method of analysis overstated the accuracy of listeners' judgments. Following Van Dommelen's procedure, data from six of Lass's reports were re-analyzed with more appropriate statistics. Results of re-analysis show that (a) listeners are not very efficient guessing the weight or height of speakers, as only 14% of the estimations correlated significantly with actual values, (b) Judgments are highly consistent under different acoustic conditions, suggesting that listeners follow vocal stereotypes about the body size of speakers, even though these stereotypes are wrong.