voice and race recognition

[s.t. bischoff]

Hi all,

I have been asked to comment on a research proposal in Sociology  that
proposes to  determine if "voice-cued cognitive schemata (organized
knowledge frameworks) leads to accurate identification of physical
appearance and biographical background of a speaker."  The research is
couched within larger questions of racism. My task is to determine if
the project as outlined is feasible (logistically) not necessarily to
comment on the design or research question. In short, participants
will be asked to match the voices they hear, reading the same script,
with photos. However, I was struck by the fact that there were no
references to linguistics or socio-linguistics in the proposal. This
is not an area I am familiar with, but thought that there must be a
body of literature on this topic within linguistics. Because I am
short of time, I just wanted to ask if there has been "significant"
research in linguistics in this area, and if so is there is one or two
key papers that are "required reading"?

Thanks,
Shannon