Haptic Augmentation of Audio and Its Effects on Speech Perception

Abstract

Voice characteristics are known to influence people’s perception of a speaker’s professional abilities, often offering an unfair disadvantage to speakers in position of perceived vulnerability. By using a custom speech to haptics synthesis framework, this paper presents results from a user study investigating the influence of haptic speech enhancement on speaker’s characteristic perception. A custom speech to haptic system is used to first replicate a study from Klofstad et al. examining how voice pitch influences perception of speaker strength, competence and trustworthiness, and second to explore the impact of multimodal stimulus presentation on these perceived characteristics. Our preliminary findings suggest that the perceived strength of a speaker with a higher voice pitch is enhanced, whereas the outcome is uncertain for competence. Perceived trustworthiness was not affected by the system at all. This work puts forward the potential positive effect that the use of haptic-enhanced communication system could have in social and professional communications, but also outlines its limitations.