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Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages

The ability to recognize an individual from their voice is a widespread ability with a long evolutionary history. Yet, the perceptual representation of familiar voices is ill-defined. In two experiments, we explored the neuropsychological processes involved in the perception of voice identity. We sp...

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Autores principales: Fontaine, Maureen, Love, Scott A., Latinus, Marianne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509798/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28769836
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01180
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author Fontaine, Maureen
Love, Scott A.
Latinus, Marianne
author_facet Fontaine, Maureen
Love, Scott A.
Latinus, Marianne
author_sort Fontaine, Maureen
collection PubMed
description The ability to recognize an individual from their voice is a widespread ability with a long evolutionary history. Yet, the perceptual representation of familiar voices is ill-defined. In two experiments, we explored the neuropsychological processes involved in the perception of voice identity. We specifically explored the hypothesis that familiar voices (trained-to-familiar (Experiment 1), and famous voices (Experiment 2)) are represented as a whole complex pattern, well approximated by the average of multiple utterances produced by a single speaker. In experiment 1, participants learned three voices over several sessions, and performed a three-alternative forced-choice identification task on original voice samples and several “speaker averages,” created by morphing across varying numbers of different vowels (e.g., [a] and [i]) produced by the same speaker. In experiment 2, the same participants performed the same task on voice samples produced by familiar speakers. The two experiments showed that for famous voices, but not for trained-to-familiar voices, identification performance increased and response times decreased as a function of the number of utterances in the averages. This study sheds light on the perceptual representation of familiar voices, and demonstrates the power of average in recognizing familiar voices. The speaker average captures the unique characteristics of a speaker, and thus retains the information essential for recognition; it acts as a prototype of the speaker.
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spelling pubmed-55097982017-08-02 Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages Fontaine, Maureen Love, Scott A. Latinus, Marianne Front Psychol Psychology The ability to recognize an individual from their voice is a widespread ability with a long evolutionary history. Yet, the perceptual representation of familiar voices is ill-defined. In two experiments, we explored the neuropsychological processes involved in the perception of voice identity. We specifically explored the hypothesis that familiar voices (trained-to-familiar (Experiment 1), and famous voices (Experiment 2)) are represented as a whole complex pattern, well approximated by the average of multiple utterances produced by a single speaker. In experiment 1, participants learned three voices over several sessions, and performed a three-alternative forced-choice identification task on original voice samples and several “speaker averages,” created by morphing across varying numbers of different vowels (e.g., [a] and [i]) produced by the same speaker. In experiment 2, the same participants performed the same task on voice samples produced by familiar speakers. The two experiments showed that for famous voices, but not for trained-to-familiar voices, identification performance increased and response times decreased as a function of the number of utterances in the averages. This study sheds light on the perceptual representation of familiar voices, and demonstrates the power of average in recognizing familiar voices. The speaker average captures the unique characteristics of a speaker, and thus retains the information essential for recognition; it acts as a prototype of the speaker. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5509798/ /pubmed/28769836 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01180 Text en Copyright © 2017 Fontaine, Love and Latinus. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Fontaine, Maureen
Love, Scott A.
Latinus, Marianne
Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages
title Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages
title_full Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages
title_fullStr Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages
title_full_unstemmed Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages
title_short Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages
title_sort familiarity and voice representation: from acoustic-based representation to voice averages
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509798/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28769836
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01180
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