Information associated with the self is prioritized relative to information associated with others and is therefore processed more quickly and accurately. Across three experiments, we examined whether a new externally-generated voice could become associated with the self and thus be prioritized in perception. In the first experiment, participants learned associations between three unfamiliar voices and three identities (self, friend, stranger). Participants then made speeded judgements of whether voiceidentity pairs were correctly matched, or not. A clear self-prioritization effect was found, with participants showing quicker and more accurate responses to the newly selfassociated voice relative to either the friend-or stranger-voice. In two further experiments, we tested whether this prioritization effect increased if the self-voice was gender-matched to the identity of the participant (Experiment 2) or if the self-voice was chosen by the participant (Experiment 3). Gender-matching did not significantly influence prioritization; the self-voice was similarly prioritized when it matched the gender identity of the listener as when it did not. However, we observed that choosing the self-voice did interact with prioritization (Experiment 3); the self-voice became more prominent, via lesser prioritization of the other identities, when the self-voice was chosen relative to when it was not. Our findings have implications for the design and selection of individuated synthetic voices used for assistive communication devices, suggesting that agency in choosing a new vocal identity may modulate the distinctiveness of that voice relative to others.Voice is central to the dynamic construction of the self and is therefore of great personal and social importance. A speaker's unique voice pattern conveys a wealth of information about their physical self to a listener, including their age, gender, health, and affective state (Kreiman & Sidtis, 2011). A speaker also has extensive control over the dynamic use of their vocal apparatus and is able to flexibly and deliberately modulate the acoustics of their voice (Hughes, Mogilski, & Harrison, 2014;McGettigan et al., 2013;McGettigan & Scott, 2014) to fulfil diverse communicative goals according to changes in social demands and the acoustic environment.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Information associated with the self is prioritised relative to information associated with others and is therefore processed more quickly and accurately. Across three experiments, we examined whether a new externally-generated voice could become associated with the self and thus be prioritised in perception.In the first experiment, participants learned associations between three unfamiliar voices and three identities (self, friend, other). Participants then made speeded judgements of whether voice-identity pairs were correctly matched, or not. A clear self-prioritisation effect was found, with participants showing faster and more accurate responses to the self-associated voice relative to either the friend- or other-associated voice.In two further experiments, we tested whether this prioritisation effect increased if the self-associated voice was sex-matched to the gender identity of the participant (Experiment 2) or if the self-voice was chosen by the participant (Experiment 3). Sex-matching did not significantly influence prioritisation; the self-voice was similarly prioritised when it matched the gender identity of the listener as when it did not. However, we observed that choosing the self-voice did interact with prioritisation (Experiment 3); the self-voice became more prominent, via lesser prioritisation of the other identities, when the self-voice was chosen relative to when it was not.Our findings have implications for the design and selection of individuated synthetic voices used for assistive communication devices, suggesting that agency in choosing a new vocal identity may modulate the distinctiveness of that voice relative to others.

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