A preliminary acoustic study of Mandarin speech in drug addicts

Abstract

Using a natural conversation paradigm, this study investigated the acoustic characteristics of Mandarin utterances in drug addicts. Twenty-one native speakers of Mandarin, including four heroin addicts, two 3,4-methylamphetamine (MDMA, also known as ecstasy) addicts, and 15 healthy controls without any history of drug abuse, were recruited for the speech production experiment. In comparison with the healthy controls, heroin addicts exhibited a higher mean F0, a lower mean intensity, a higher variability in both F0 and intensity, and a lower H1-H2, while MDMA addicts exhibited a higher variability in both F0 and intensity. Discriminant analysis based on these acoustic parameters further showed a good accuracy of differentiating the three groups of speakers. These findings provide the basis for future research into identifying drug addicts on the basis of speech signals.