Perceptual prioritisation of self-associated voices

Abstract

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.