Acoustic and Glottal Excitation Analyses of Sober vs. Intoxicated Speech: A First Repor

Author: Kathleen E. Cummings, Steven B. Chin, and David B. Pisoni

Abstract:
This is a first report of results from acoustic and glottal excitation analyses of speech produced both with and without alcohol. The new analyses were designed to determine whether there are significant and identifiable differences in phonation between the two types of speech. Non-nasal vowels extracted form eight isolated words produces by four talkers in both a nonalcohol and an alcohol condition were examined in terms of (1) direct measures of acoustic speech waveform parameters, (2) perturbation measures of acoustic speech waveform parameters, and (3) measures of the glottal excitation waveshape. Parameters related to the steadiness of speech production, as reflected in perturbations in adjacent pitch periods, exhibited differences between alcohol and nonalcohol speech. Specifically[, we found consistent differences between the two types of speech on several measures of jitter, although the amount of variation between the alcohol and nonalcohol speech appeared to be talker-dependent.