Citation

Cook S, Wilding J. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 1997; 11(2): 95-111.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(199704)11:2<95::AID-ACP429>3.0.CO;2-O

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

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.

Language: en