City Research Online

How many voices did you hear? Natural variability disrupts identity perception from unfamiliar voices

Lavan, N., Burston, L. F. K. & Garrido, L. ORCID: 0000-0002-1955-6506 (2019). How many voices did you hear? Natural variability disrupts identity perception from unfamiliar voices. British Journal of Psychology, 110(3), pp. 576-593. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12348

Abstract

Our voices sound different depending on the context (laughing vs. talking to a child vs. giving a speech), making within‐person variability an inherent feature of human voices. When perceiving speaker identities, listeners therefore need to not only ‘tell people apart’ (perceiving exemplars from two different speakers as separate identities) but also ‘tell people together’ (perceiving different exemplars from the same speaker as a single identity). In the current study, we investigated how such natural within‐person variability affects voice identity perception. Using voices from a popular TV show, listeners, who were either familiar or unfamiliar with this show, sorted naturally varying voice clips from two speakers into clusters to represent perceived identities. Across three independent participant samples, unfamiliar listeners perceived more identities than familiar listeners and frequently mistook exemplars from the same speaker to be different identities. These findings point towards a selective failure in ‘telling people together’. Our study highlights within‐person variability as a key feature of voices that has striking effects on (unfamiliar) voice identity perception. Our findings not only open up a new line of enquiry in the field of voice perception but also call for a re‐evaluation of theoretical models to account for natural variability during identity perception.

Publication Type: Article
Publisher Keywords: voice, identity, variability, familiarity, recognition
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Departments: School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:
[thumbnail of How many voices did you hear.pdf]
Preview
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.

Download (1MB) | Preview

Export

Add to AnyAdd to TwitterAdd to FacebookAdd to LinkedinAdd to PinterestAdd to Email

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

Actions (login required)

Admin Login Admin Login