Error tendencies of human speaker recognition in noisy environments: Effects of noise type and sex differences

Abstract

Human speaker recognition performance can be degraded by various factors. Understanding the factors affecting it and the errors caused by these factors is crucial for forensic applications. To study the effects of noisy environments on human speaker recognition, we conducted a hearing experiment using speech samples of two words by five male speakers, and two noise types (speech-like noise and environmental noise in boiler room) with three steps of signal-to-noise ratio (∞, 0 dB, or −10 dB). The results suggested that the listeners tended to observe different speakers to be the same speaker rather than vice versa, and this tendency was also affected by sex of the listener.