Speech rate and articulation rate in corpus used in the forensic Speaker Comparison

Abstract: This study examined the speech rate (SR) and the articulation rate (AR), as well as the appropriateness of the use of these temporal measures in the forensic Speaker Comparison. The global and local mean SR/AR in spontaneous speech samples - obtained from unaware audio recordings (legally authorized telephone interceptions) and known ones (semistructured interview) - from seven native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, of both sexes, aged between 14 and 33 years were considered. The speaker-discriminating power of SR and AR and the relationship between rates and the independent variables age, sex, formal education, temporal gap between the recordings, type of recording, length of speech stretch were defined. As a result we obtained satisfactory intraclass correlation coefficient for the AR, significant difference between the factors of the variable type of recording in SR and significant correlation between temporal gap and AR and between length of speech stretch and SR.