Who knows carl bildt? - and what if you don't?

One problem with using speaker identification by witnesses in legal settings is that high quality imitations can result in speaker misidentification. A recent series of experiments has looked at listener acceptance of an imitation of a well known Swedish politician. Results showed that listener expectation of the topic of an imitated passage impacts on the acceptance or rejection of the imitation. The strength of that impact varied according to various listener characteristics, including age of listener. It is likely that age reflected the degree of familiarity with the voice that was being imitated. The present study has reanalyzed the data from Swedish listeners in the previous studies to look at performance according to self reports of whether the listeners were familiar with the politician. Results showed that the acceptance of the imitation by those listeners who reported knowing the politician was more influenced by the topic of the imitated passage than by those who reported not knowing him. Implications of this finding in regard to listeners’ choice of alternate voices in the line up are discussed.