Subjective Estimation of Speech Rate

Abstract The presupposition that listeners tend to estimate speech of an unfamiliar language as being faster than speech in their mother tongue was tested by means of a perception test consisting of five different languages (Dutch, English, French, Spanish and Moroccan Arabic) and three different speech rates (normal, fast and extra fast). The perception test was offered to two listening panels, differing in level of familiarity with one language (English) and in general listening ability (trained versus untrained listeners). The results indicate that the presupposition has to be rejected, as both panels were able to estimate the speech rate of items of different languages and intended speech rates with great accuracy and agreement. The results also indicate that the listeners’ main cue for tempo detection is not their knowledge of the lexical information of the signal, but rather some temporal feature or features in the speech signal.