No abstract

No abstract

Two experiments tested memory for a once-heard voice. Experiment 1 showed that hearing an unknown voice utter the same sentence three times improved recognition of the voice a week later compared with hearing only a single utterance of the sentence, but instructions to attend to the voice did not. The impairment caused by seeing the speaker's face during the original utterance (the Face Overshadowing Effect--FOE) occurred only with the single utterance and was unaffected by instructions. It was concluded that length of utterance without increase in speech variety aids voice recognition, and that the FOE is not due to voluntary attention to face rather than voice, but may be due to involuntary attention to the initial exposure of the face. Experiment 2 investigated whether exposure to the face before the onset of speech reduced the FOE. Such an effect was observed and it was concluded that the FOE is due to involuntary preference for processing face information in order to aid later recognition of the individual, while speech is processed primarily for meaning. Absence of an FOE on memory for the words uttered was consistent with this interpretation.

Three aspects of voice recognition were investigated in the study reported here: memory for familiar voices, memory for the words spoken, and the relative effects of length and variation in a voice extract on long‐ and short‐term memory. In Experiment 1, recognition memory for the briefly heard voice of a stranger was superior with longer extracts (p<0.01), but increasing vowel variety did not improve performance. This pattern was repeated for short‐term memory (p<0.01) in Experiment 2. Scores for the above task correlated significantly (p<0.05) with scores for recognizing well‐known voices. In a further test of well‐known voice memory in Experiment 3, a weak and non‐significant positive correlation (r=0.29) was found between memory for well‐known voices and memory for a once‐heard voice. Memory for the words spoken did not correlate significantly with memory for the unknown voice itself. The possibilities of a memory‐for‐voices general ability, and forensic applications of the findings are discussed. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Results were combined from 5 experiments by Cook in 1998 with 728 participants who listened to one male voice and one female voice each saying a sentence, then attempted to recognise the voices from line-ups of six voices presented a week later. While 352 male listeners did not differ significantly in recognising female and male voices (38% correct vs 41%), 376 female listeners were significantly more likely to recognise female than male voices (51% vs 43% correct). There was no evidence for individual differences in voice recognition in that listeners who recognised the male voice were no more likely to recognise the female voice than those who failed to recognise the male voice.