Vincent Hughes
Biographic Data
| ID | 232569 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vincent Hughes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vincent |
| FAMILY NAME | Hughes |
| SIGNATURE | HUGHES V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4411-534X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Effects of Expert Conclusions and Additional Forensic Evidence on Listener Evaluations in a Voice Comparison Task
Little is known about how lay people understand and evaluate forensic evidence. Yet in many jurisdictions, lay people make up juries that are responsible for determining the innocence or guilt of the accused. In this paper, we examine how lay people's evaluations of voice comparison evidence are affected by likelihood ratio (LR)-based conclusions of different magnitudes, expressed in the form of numerical and verbal statements, as well as the sug…
Speaker-specificity in speech production: The contribution of source and filter
This study examines the extent to which speaker-specific information is encoded in different features of vocal output and the relationships between those features. A range of acoustic features, grouped as source (laryngeal voice quality measures and fundamental frequency) and filter features (formants and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients; MFCCs), were extracted from the vocalic portion of the hesitation marker um for 90 male speakers of Standa…
Tense times for young migrants: Temporality, Life-Course and Immigration Status
This article explores the intersection between immigration status, life-course and the experience of time. It looks at how time and life-course transitions are experienced by young people who are in constant encounter with the immigration regime in the UK. The encounters at this intersection produce a complex landscape for young people to navigate during their transitions to adulthood. What emerges from unpicking the relations of this messy and c…
Style variability in disfluency analysis for forensic speaker comparison
Disfluencies are a natural part of speech, often going unnoticed by both speaker and listener. Recent research on disfluency profiles (McDougall and Duckworth 2017, 2018) shows that they contain speaker-specific information which could be analysed and compared in forensic speaker comparison (FSC) casework. Since samples in FSC tend to be mismatched for speaking situation and style, the present study investigates the consistency of speakers’ disfl…
Sharing innovative methods, data and knowledge across sociophonetics and forensic speech science
Forensic speech science is the application of speech analysis methods to forensic recordings; in many jurisdictions this is predominantly the application of sociophonetics. Sociophonetics and forensic speech science have developed as independent research areas with their own aims, methodologies and identities, and the gap between the fields has arguably grown bigger in recent years. Yet, there is much to be gained for both fields from closer coll…
Assessing the effects of accent-mismatched reference population databases on the performance of an automatic speaker recognition system
Automatic Speaker Recognition (ASR) systems are designed to provide the user with statistics relating to the similarity of two or more speech samples and to the typicality of those shared features in the wider population. When an ASR system is used as part of a forensic investigation, the user must decide what counts as the appropriate ‘wider population’ and select a reference database accordingly. While it has generally been held that the voices…
The effect of speaker sampling in likelihood ratio based forensic voice comparison
Within the field of forensic voice comparison (FVC), there is growing pressure for experts to demonstrate the validity and reliability of the conclusions they reach in casework. One benefit of a fully data-driven approach that utilises databases of speakers to compute numerical likelihood ratios (LRs) is that it is possible to estimate validity and reliability empirically. However, little is known about the stability of LR output as a function of…
The use of the Vocal Profile Analysis for speaker characterization: Methodological proposals
Among phoneticians, the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) is one of the most widely used methods for the componential assessment of voice quality. Whether the ultimate goal of the VPA evaluation is the comparative description of languages or the characterization of an individual speaker, the VPA protocol shows great potential for different research areas of speech communication. However, its use is not without practical difficulties. Despite these, me…
Three steps forward for predictability. Consideration of methodological robustness, indexical and prosodic factors, and replication in the laboratory
There is now abundant evidence that phonetic forms are shaped by probabilistic effects reflecting predictability or informativity . We outline a number of challenges for such work, where theoretical claims are often based on small differences in acoustic measurements, or interpretations of small statistical effect sizes. We outline caveats about the methods and assumptions encountered in many studies of predictability effects, particularly regard…
Bordering education: Migrants’ entitlements to post-compulsory education in the United Kingdom
Immigration policy in the UK restricts migrants’ eligibility to some services and benefits, including in the sphere of education. Compulsory education is available to all, but many migrants face restrictions based on residency and immigration status, which affect fee rates and entitlement to financial support for further and higher education. The article draws on two studies of (i) family migrants and (ii) young precarious migrants to explore how…
Strength of forensic voice comparison evidence from the acoustics of filled pauses
This study investigates the evidential value of filled pauses (FPs, i.e. um, uh) as variables in forensic voice comparison. FPs for 60 young male speakers of standard southern British English were analysed, drawn from Task 1 of the DyViS corpus (Nolan et al. 2009). The following acoustic properties were analysed: midpoint frequencies of the first three formants in the vocalic portion; ‘dynamic’ characterisations of formant trajectories (i.e. quad…
Narrating “Home”: Experiences of German Expellees after the Second World War
This article explores the experiences of forced displacement through the narratives of expellees in Germany after the Second World War. It considers how disruptions of “home” over time and space have led to constant deconstructing and reconstructing of home. Based on autobiographical interviews, this article argues that home is multidimensional and contradictory, changing over time and through experiences, becoming simultaneously connected to a s…
Citizenship and its Others
This edited volume analyzes citizenship through attention to its Others, revealing the partiality of citizenship's inclusion and claims to equality by defining it as legal status, political belonging
Variability in analyst decisions during the computation of numerical likelihood ratios
This study assesses the extent to which likelihood ratios (LRs) are affected by analyst decisions regarding the number of reference speakers, number of tokens per speaker, and degree of linguistic match between the suspect-offender and the reference data. Using F1 and F2 trajectories from spontaneous /u?/ vowels, LRs were computed against a reference set of up to 120 speakers, and between 2 and 13 tokens per speaker. LR scores proved robust when …
Interaction of social and linguistic constraints on two vowel changes in northern England
This paper focuses on the way that local social indexicality interacts with principles of vowel change. A combination of real and apparent time data from the northern English dialect of York indicate fronting of tense back vowels in the goat and goose lexical sets, and diphthongization of traditionally monophthongal mid-vowels in the face and goat lexical sets. The latter process of change, a northward diffusion of more prestigious southern forms…
Interaction of social and linguistic constraints on two vowel changes in northern England
This paper focuses on the way that local social indexicality interacts with principles of vowel change. A combination of real and apparent time data from the northern English dialect of York indicate fronting of tense back vowels in the goat and goose lexical sets, and diphthongization of traditionally monophthongal mid-vowels in the face and goat lexical sets. The latter process of change, a northward diffusion of more prestigious southern forms…
Tense times for young migrants: Temporality, Life-Course and Immigration Status
This article explores the intersection between immigration status, life-course and the experience of time. It looks at how time and life-course transitions are experienced by young people who are in constant encounter with the immigration regime in the UK. The encounters at this intersection produce a complex landscape for young people to navigate during their transitions to adulthood. What emerges from unpicking the relations of this messy and c…
Bordering education: Migrants’ entitlements to post-compulsory education in the United Kingdom
Immigration policy in the UK restricts migrants’ eligibility to some services and benefits, including in the sphere of education. Compulsory education is available to all, but many migrants face restrictions based on residency and immigration status, which affect fee rates and entitlement to financial support for further and higher education. The article draws on two studies of (i) family migrants and (ii) young precarious migrants to explore how…
The use of the Vocal Profile Analysis for speaker characterization: Methodological proposals
Among phoneticians, the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) is one of the most widely used methods for the componential assessment of voice quality. Whether the ultimate goal of the VPA evaluation is the comparative description of languages or the characterization of an individual speaker, the VPA protocol shows great potential for different research areas of speech communication. However, its use is not without practical difficulties. Despite these, me…
Narrating “Home”: Experiences of German Expellees after the Second World War
This article explores the experiences of forced displacement through the narratives of expellees in Germany after the Second World War. It considers how disruptions of “home” over time and space have led to constant deconstructing and reconstructing of home. Based on autobiographical interviews, this article argues that home is multidimensional and contradictory, changing over time and through experiences, becoming simultaneously connected to a s…
Interaction of social and linguistic constraints on two vowel changes in northern England
This paper focuses on the way that local social indexicality interacts with principles of vowel change. A combination of real and apparent time data from the northern English dialect of York indicate fronting of tense back vowels in the goat and goose lexical sets, and diphthongization of traditionally monophthongal mid-vowels in the face and goat lexical sets. The latter process of change, a northward diffusion of more prestigious southern forms…
Citizenship and its Others
This edited volume analyzes citizenship through attention to its Others, revealing the partiality of citizenship's inclusion and claims to equality by defining it as legal status, political belonging
Variability in analyst decisions during the computation of numerical likelihood ratios
This study assesses the extent to which likelihood ratios (LRs) are affected by analyst decisions regarding the number of reference speakers, number of tokens per speaker, and degree of linguistic match between the suspect-offender and the reference data. Using F1 and F2 trajectories from spontaneous /u?/ vowels, LRs were computed against a reference set of up to 120 speakers, and between 2 and 13 tokens per speaker. LR scores proved robust when …
Strength of forensic voice comparison evidence from the acoustics of filled pauses
This study investigates the evidential value of filled pauses (FPs, i.e. um, uh) as variables in forensic voice comparison. FPs for 60 young male speakers of standard southern British English were analysed, drawn from Task 1 of the DyViS corpus (Nolan et al. 2009). The following acoustic properties were analysed: midpoint frequencies of the first three formants in the vocalic portion; ‘dynamic’ characterisations of formant trajectories (i.e. quad…
Narrating “Home”: Experiences of German Expellees after the Second World War
This article explores the experiences of forced displacement through the narratives of expellees in Germany after the Second World War. It considers how disruptions of “home” over time and space have led to constant deconstructing and reconstructing of home. Based on autobiographical interviews, this article argues that home is multidimensional and contradictory, changing over time and through experiences, becoming simultaneously connected to a s…
Three steps forward for predictability. Consideration of methodological robustness, indexical and prosodic factors, and replication in the laboratory
There is now abundant evidence that phonetic forms are shaped by probabilistic effects reflecting predictability or informativity . We outline a number of challenges for such work, where theoretical claims are often based on small differences in acoustic measurements, or interpretations of small statistical effect sizes. We outline caveats about the methods and assumptions encountered in many studies of predictability effects, particularly regard…
Bordering education: Migrants’ entitlements to post-compulsory education in the United Kingdom
Immigration policy in the UK restricts migrants’ eligibility to some services and benefits, including in the sphere of education. Compulsory education is available to all, but many migrants face restrictions based on residency and immigration status, which affect fee rates and entitlement to financial support for further and higher education. The article draws on two studies of (i) family migrants and (ii) young precarious migrants to explore how…
The effect of speaker sampling in likelihood ratio based forensic voice comparison
Within the field of forensic voice comparison (FVC), there is growing pressure for experts to demonstrate the validity and reliability of the conclusions they reach in casework. One benefit of a fully data-driven approach that utilises databases of speakers to compute numerical likelihood ratios (LRs) is that it is possible to estimate validity and reliability empirically. However, little is known about the stability of LR output as a function of…
The use of the Vocal Profile Analysis for speaker characterization: Methodological proposals
Among phoneticians, the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) is one of the most widely used methods for the componential assessment of voice quality. Whether the ultimate goal of the VPA evaluation is the comparative description of languages or the characterization of an individual speaker, the VPA protocol shows great potential for different research areas of speech communication. However, its use is not without practical difficulties. Despite these, me…
Sharing innovative methods, data and knowledge across sociophonetics and forensic speech science
Forensic speech science is the application of speech analysis methods to forensic recordings; in many jurisdictions this is predominantly the application of sociophonetics. Sociophonetics and forensic speech science have developed as independent research areas with their own aims, methodologies and identities, and the gap between the fields has arguably grown bigger in recent years. Yet, there is much to be gained for both fields from closer coll…
Assessing the effects of accent-mismatched reference population databases on the performance of an automatic speaker recognition system
Automatic Speaker Recognition (ASR) systems are designed to provide the user with statistics relating to the similarity of two or more speech samples and to the typicality of those shared features in the wider population. When an ASR system is used as part of a forensic investigation, the user must decide what counts as the appropriate ‘wider population’ and select a reference database accordingly. While it has generally been held that the voices…
Style variability in disfluency analysis for forensic speaker comparison
Disfluencies are a natural part of speech, often going unnoticed by both speaker and listener. Recent research on disfluency profiles (McDougall and Duckworth 2017, 2018) shows that they contain speaker-specific information which could be analysed and compared in forensic speaker comparison (FSC) casework. Since samples in FSC tend to be mismatched for speaking situation and style, the present study investigates the consistency of speakers’ disfl…
Tense times for young migrants: Temporality, Life-Course and Immigration Status
This article explores the intersection between immigration status, life-course and the experience of time. It looks at how time and life-course transitions are experienced by young people who are in constant encounter with the immigration regime in the UK. The encounters at this intersection produce a complex landscape for young people to navigate during their transitions to adulthood. What emerges from unpicking the relations of this messy and c…
Speaker-specificity in speech production: The contribution of source and filter
This study examines the extent to which speaker-specific information is encoded in different features of vocal output and the relationships between those features. A range of acoustic features, grouped as source (laryngeal voice quality measures and fundamental frequency) and filter features (formants and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients; MFCCs), were extracted from the vocalic portion of the hesitation marker um for 90 male speakers of Standa…
The Effects of Expert Conclusions and Additional Forensic Evidence on Listener Evaluations in a Voice Comparison Task
Little is known about how lay people understand and evaluate forensic evidence. Yet in many jurisdictions, lay people make up juries that are responsible for determining the innocence or guilt of the accused. In this paper, we examine how lay people's evaluations of voice comparison evidence are affected by likelihood ratio (LR)-based conclusions of different magnitudes, expressed in the form of numerical and verbal statements, as well as the sug…
Computer Science (9 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (7 works) · Speech Recognition and Synthesis (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Speech recognition (5 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (4 works) · Statistics (4 works)