FACTOR is pleased to announce a talk by Alice Paver (Cambridge), in partnership with PhonLab:

TITLE

Perceived voice similarity, voice quality and the telephone effect: an experiment

ABSTRACT

Voice quality (VQ) is considered a key speaker-specific feature for speaker comparison conducted by forensic phoneticians, but as audio samples for analysis are often of poor and/or mismatched quality (e.g. telephone vs. police interview), analysts must consider the potential effect of audio quality on perception of VQ which can affect expert assessments. Perceived voice similarity (PVS) is also a concern for experts, not just for speaker comparison but also when collecting earwitness evidence via voice parades. VQ is a phonetic correlate of PVS judgements by lay-listeners, and telephone transmission is known to reduce perceptual distance between voices, but the perceptual effect of reduced audio quality on specific VQ settings across multiple speakers is not yet known. An online experiment investigated the relationship between VQ and PVS in different audio quality conditions. This talk will discuss findings and their implications for our understanding of perceived voice similarity and the role voice quality plays in forensically relevant audio quality conditions.

TIME & PLACE

W04, 1500-1550, Tue 28th Oct 2025

In-person: County South B89

Online: Teams

Find information on how to get to campus here, and how to navigate campus buildings here.

FACTOR is pleased to announce our Week 3 discussion, which will be led by Dr Justin Lo:

TITLE

Public trust in digital data & evidence

ABSTRACT

For Week 3, we are planning to have a discussion on public trust in digital data and evidence. This is inspired by a few reports that I have recently come across, all broadly linked to this theme and with interesting commonalities, and I thought it would be worth having a think what the issues outlined in these reports mean for the forensic and security areas. I’ll present a brief summary in the beginning, but I also invite you to have a quick read (none of them are particularly lengthy):

1. CETaS report on UK public attitudes to national security data processing: Assessing human and machine intrusion (linked) (The report is long, but there is a good executive summary.)
2. Williams et al. (2026). Public perceptions of speech technology trust in the United Kingdom. Computer Speech & Language
3. Trust in Forensic Science Evidence (2024) Project Launch Event Report

TIME & PLACE

W03, 1400-1450, Thu 23rd Oct 2025

In-person: County South C89

Online: Teams

Find information on how to get to campus here, and how to navigate campus buildings here.