Latest Developments in Voice Identification

A 2‐yr voice‐identification experiment was completed at Michigan State University in December, 1971. A total of 34 996 experimental trials of identification were performed by 29 trained examiners, involving a variety of conditions. Those experimental conditions correlated with forensic models (open trials fixed and random contexts, noncontemporary spectrograms) yielded an error of approximately 6% of false identifications and 12% of false eliminations. Examiners were forced to reach a positive decision in each experimental trial. They judged approximately 60% of their wrong answers and 20% of their right answers as “uncertain.” This suggests that if the examiners had been able to express no opinion when in doubt, only 74% out of the total number of tasks would have had a positive answer with approximately 2% errors of false identifications and 5% errors of false eliminations. The experience obtained in both laboratory and field work, during more than 3 yr, convinced the authors that voiceidentification te...