Kirsty Mcdougall
Biographic Data
| ID | 125987 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kirsty Mcdougall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kirsty |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcdougall |
| SIGNATURE | MCDOUGALL K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
T/ Production in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian Englishes in Warrnambool and Mildura
A sociophonetic study of coda /t/ in Australian Englishes spoken in Warrnambool and Mildura, Victoria, Australia, is described. A total of 2112 coda /t/ tokens produced by 61 adult L1 speakers was analyzed using auditory and acoustic profiling, focusing on four social factors (location, dialect, age and gender). The corpus included 33 Aboriginal English and 28 Mainstream Australian English speakers (24 male, 37 female) who fell into roughly equal…
Pausing and the ‘Othello Error’
The idea of detecting deception from speech is very attractive from a law enforcement perspective, yet research considering the possibility has yielded conflicting results, due to the practical difficulties in investigating the topic. Scientific research is yet to provide forensic linguistics with a reliable means of discerning lies from truths. The present study explores the relationship between truthfulness and pausing behaviour. Various aspect…
Individual patterns of disfluency across speaking styles
Features of speech related to fluency such as filled and silent pauses, sound prolongations, repetitions and self-interruptions exhibit considerable variation among speakers, yet the speaker-specificity of such features has received little attention inforensic phonetic research. The present study investigates the extent to which individual differences in disfluency behaviour are preserved across different speaking styles, a key concern for forens…
Assessing perceived voice similarity using Multidimensional Scaling for the construction of voice parades
In recent years forensic phoneticians, in consultation with psychologists and law enforcement officers, have put considerable effort into devising and refining procedures for preparing and conducting fair voice parades. In England and Wales, a procedure for conducting a voice parade is outlined in a 2003 Home Office circular; this has been successfully implemented in a number of cases. These guidelines explain that a phonetician should examine th…
Effects of the telephone on perceived voice similarity
This study is relevant to forensic cases where an earwitness claims to be able to remember and identify a voice, and, more generally, to voice recognition. Given that a voice may have been heard over the telephone, it is important to know the effects of the telephone on voice quality. In particular we may ask whether the perceptual distance between two voice samples is affected by telephone transmission. In this paper the effects of the telephone…
The Very Recent Fall and Rise of Harris Tweed
In September 2009, the UK's BBC4 televised Tweed, the story of an iconic, indigenous, handwoven fabric-Harris Tweed. This article is edited from the transcript of the program, written by Ian Denyer
Improving the Consistency of Formant Measurement
This study examines the inter-analyst robustness of formant frequency (F) measurements before and after agreeing a common measurement procedure. Three laboratories used the latest available version of the same formant extraction software to extract F1, F2 and F3 values from the same sets of high quality audio recordings of six repetitions of read utterances containing six target monophthongs,/i?, æ, ??, ??, ?, u?/. The subjects were two sets of t…
The UK position statement on forensic speaker comparison; a rejoinder to Rose and Morrison
Individual Variation in the Frication of Voiceless Plosives in Australian English
Deborah Loakes and Kirsty McDougall, Individual Variation in the Frication of Voiceless Plosives in Australian English: A Study of Twins' Speech, Australian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 30 (2): 155-181, April 2010, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268601003678601
The DyViS database
The DyViS project (‘Dynamic Variability in Speech: a Forensic Phonetic Study of British English’) at the University of Cambridge has compiled a large-scale database of speech recordings which will be freely available for (non-commercial) research purposes. The database comprises recordings of 100 male speakers of Standard Southern British English, aged 18-25, undertaking four tasks involving different speaking styles: a simulated police interview…
Acoustic and perceptual effects of telephone transmission on vowel quality
This study investigates acoustic and perceptual effects of telephone transmission on the vowels /i:/, /ae/ and /u:/ in Standard Southern British English. The aim of the study was to determine whether the ‘telephone effect’ described for vowels by Künzel (2001) has an effect on perception as well as on acoustic information. Acoustic measurements confirmed that telephone-transmitted high vowels experience a shift in the frequency of F1. Secondly, a…
The acoustic character of fricated /t/ in Australian English
Australian English /t/ has a fricative realisation in some contexts. The presence of an additional surface fricative in the language raises questions about potential merger and the maintenance of contrasts. An orthographic representation of fricated /t/ as 〈sh〉 suggests a similarity to the existing fricative /ʃ/. This paper compares the acoustic characteristics of fricated realisations of /t/ in Australian English with those of /ʃ/ and /s/, the f…
Dynamic features of speech and the characterization of speakers
Previous research in speaker characteristics has tended to focus on static properties of the speech signal. Static features of speech generally display differences between individuals, but are insufficient to characterize a speaker. The present study considers reasons why dynamic features of speech should provide an important source of speaker-distinguishing information. It discusses this idea for formant frequencies in particular, and outlines a…
Dynamic features of speech and the characterization of speakers
Previous research in speaker characteristics has tended to focus on static properties of the speech signal. Static features of speech generally display differences between individuals, but are insufficient to characterize a speaker. The present study considers reasons why dynamic features of speech should provide an important source of speaker-distinguishing information. It discusses this idea for formant frequencies in particular, and outlines a…
Speaker-specific formant dynamics
Formant frequency dynamics are relevant to forensic speaker identification since they are determined by the shape and size of a speaker’s vocal tract and the way he or she configures the articulators for speech. This study investigates individual|differences in the formant dynamics of /aI/ produced by five male Australian English speakers, and the effects of changes in speaking rate and prosodic stress on these differences. F1, F2 and F3 frequenc…
Individual Variation in the Frication of Voiceless Plosives in Australian English
Deborah Loakes and Kirsty McDougall, Individual Variation in the Frication of Voiceless Plosives in Australian English: A Study of Twins' Speech, Australian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 30 (2): 155-181, April 2010, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268601003678601
The acoustic character of fricated /t/ in Australian English
Australian English /t/ has a fricative realisation in some contexts. The presence of an additional surface fricative in the language raises questions about potential merger and the maintenance of contrasts. An orthographic representation of fricated /t/ as 〈sh〉 suggests a similarity to the existing fricative /ʃ/. This paper compares the acoustic characteristics of fricated realisations of /t/ in Australian English with those of /ʃ/ and /s/, the f…
Speaker-specific formant dynamics
Formant frequency dynamics are relevant to forensic speaker identification since they are determined by the shape and size of a speaker’s vocal tract and the way he or she configures the articulators for speech. This study investigates individual|differences in the formant dynamics of /aI/ produced by five male Australian English speakers, and the effects of changes in speaking rate and prosodic stress on these differences. F1, F2 and F3 frequenc…
Dynamic features of speech and the characterization of speakers
Previous research in speaker characteristics has tended to focus on static properties of the speech signal. Static features of speech generally display differences between individuals, but are insufficient to characterize a speaker. The present study considers reasons why dynamic features of speech should provide an important source of speaker-distinguishing information. It discusses this idea for formant frequencies in particular, and outlines a…
Dynamic features of speech and the characterization of speakers
Previous research in speaker characteristics has tended to focus on static properties of the speech signal. Static features of speech generally display differences between individuals, but are insufficient to characterize a speaker. The present study considers reasons why dynamic features of speech should provide an important source of speaker-distinguishing information. It discusses this idea for formant frequencies in particular, and outlines a…
The DyViS database
The DyViS project (‘Dynamic Variability in Speech: a Forensic Phonetic Study of British English’) at the University of Cambridge has compiled a large-scale database of speech recordings which will be freely available for (non-commercial) research purposes. The database comprises recordings of 100 male speakers of Standard Southern British English, aged 18-25, undertaking four tasks involving different speaking styles: a simulated police interview…
Acoustic and perceptual effects of telephone transmission on vowel quality
This study investigates acoustic and perceptual effects of telephone transmission on the vowels /i:/, /ae/ and /u:/ in Standard Southern British English. The aim of the study was to determine whether the ‘telephone effect’ described for vowels by Künzel (2001) has an effect on perception as well as on acoustic information. Acoustic measurements confirmed that telephone-transmitted high vowels experience a shift in the frequency of F1. Secondly, a…
The acoustic character of fricated /t/ in Australian English
Australian English /t/ has a fricative realisation in some contexts. The presence of an additional surface fricative in the language raises questions about potential merger and the maintenance of contrasts. An orthographic representation of fricated /t/ as 〈sh〉 suggests a similarity to the existing fricative /ʃ/. This paper compares the acoustic characteristics of fricated realisations of /t/ in Australian English with those of /ʃ/ and /s/, the f…
The UK position statement on forensic speaker comparison; a rejoinder to Rose and Morrison
Individual Variation in the Frication of Voiceless Plosives in Australian English
Deborah Loakes and Kirsty McDougall, Individual Variation in the Frication of Voiceless Plosives in Australian English: A Study of Twins' Speech, Australian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 30 (2): 155-181, April 2010, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268601003678601
Improving the Consistency of Formant Measurement
This study examines the inter-analyst robustness of formant frequency (F) measurements before and after agreeing a common measurement procedure. Three laboratories used the latest available version of the same formant extraction software to extract F1, F2 and F3 values from the same sets of high quality audio recordings of six repetitions of read utterances containing six target monophthongs,/i?, æ, ??, ??, ?, u?/. The subjects were two sets of t…
The Very Recent Fall and Rise of Harris Tweed
In September 2009, the UK's BBC4 televised Tweed, the story of an iconic, indigenous, handwoven fabric-Harris Tweed. This article is edited from the transcript of the program, written by Ian Denyer
Assessing perceived voice similarity using Multidimensional Scaling for the construction of voice parades
In recent years forensic phoneticians, in consultation with psychologists and law enforcement officers, have put considerable effort into devising and refining procedures for preparing and conducting fair voice parades. In England and Wales, a procedure for conducting a voice parade is outlined in a 2003 Home Office circular; this has been successfully implemented in a number of cases. These guidelines explain that a phonetician should examine th…
Effects of the telephone on perceived voice similarity
This study is relevant to forensic cases where an earwitness claims to be able to remember and identify a voice, and, more generally, to voice recognition. Given that a voice may have been heard over the telephone, it is important to know the effects of the telephone on voice quality. In particular we may ask whether the perceptual distance between two voice samples is affected by telephone transmission. In this paper the effects of the telephone…
Individual patterns of disfluency across speaking styles
Features of speech related to fluency such as filled and silent pauses, sound prolongations, repetitions and self-interruptions exhibit considerable variation among speakers, yet the speaker-specificity of such features has received little attention inforensic phonetic research. The present study investigates the extent to which individual differences in disfluency behaviour are preserved across different speaking styles, a key concern for forens…
Pausing and the ‘Othello Error’
The idea of detecting deception from speech is very attractive from a law enforcement perspective, yet research considering the possibility has yielded conflicting results, due to the practical difficulties in investigating the topic. Scientific research is yet to provide forensic linguistics with a reliable means of discerning lies from truths. The present study explores the relationship between truthfulness and pausing behaviour. Various aspect…
T/ Production in Mainstream and Aboriginal Australian Englishes in Warrnambool and Mildura
A sociophonetic study of coda /t/ in Australian Englishes spoken in Warrnambool and Mildura, Victoria, Australia, is described. A total of 2112 coda /t/ tokens produced by 61 adult L1 speakers was analyzed using auditory and acoustic profiling, focusing on four social factors (location, dialect, age and gender). The corpus included 33 Aboriginal English and 28 Mainstream Australian English speakers (24 male, 37 female) who fell into roughly equal…
Computer Science (11 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (11 works) · Speech Recognition and Synthesis (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Speech recognition (7 works) · Speech and Audio Processing (5 works) · Acoustics (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works)