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Motion capture technology, the science of speech and the Pink Panther are being brought together for a research project at the University of Alberta that aims to pinpoint how humans make judgments about gender.

The project hopes to answer the question: if you can only hear a person’s voice and have minimal visual information, how do you determine if that person is a man or a woman?

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To that end, U of A researcher Teresa Hardy is conducting an unusual experiment with transgender women.

Participants in the exercise watch a short cartoon story featuring the Pink Panther character, and are then asked to retell the story.

As they speak, their voice and body movements are recorded, but not their face. Motion capture technology is used to transform each participant into a computer-generated stick figure, erasing their physical appearance.

The recordings are then shown to other people, who are asked to decide whether they believe they are listening to a man or woman, and why they have come to that conclusion.