A model of person perception from voices

Abstract

When we hear a voice, we instantly form rich impressions of the person it belongs to -whether we are familiar with this voice or whether we are hearing it for the first time. Despite the rich impressions we can form of both familiar and unfamiliar voices, current models of voice processing primarily focus on familiar voice identity perception only and do not explicitly account for the processing of unfamiliar voices. Where unfamiliar identity processing is described, it tends to be in the context of specific identity perception tasks, such that the extant literature is largely built on a distinction between familiar voice recognition and unfamiliar voice discrimination. We argue that the current focus of the literature is too narrow in its strong emphasis on identity-specific perception, and does not adequately reflect person perception from voices beyond experimental tasks. Here, we propose a broader, unified account of person perception from both familiar and unfamiliar voices. We suggest that listeners routinely perceive all person characteristics from voices via common recognition processes, based on representations -be those of a specific identity, speaker sex, accent, or a perceived personality trait. While explicit discrimination processes may still be used to disambiguate percepts, they are likely to play a smaller role in perception in naturalistic settings. We offer discussions of how this representation-centred person perception from voices may work, in terms of the nature of representations, their specificity and interactions of different kinds of representation.

Are super‐face‐recognisers also super‐voice‐recognisers? Evidence from cross‐modal identification tasks

“…Indeed, familiar voice recognition is relatively robust to speech content generated variations in low‐level acoustic features (e.g., Zäske et al, 2010), or vocal disguise (e.g., Hollien et al, 1982). Both face (Jeffrey et al, 2011; Valentine, 1991) and voice representations (Latinus & Belin, 2011; Lavan, Knight, & McGettigan, 2019; Papcun et al, 1989; Patel, 2008) also appear to be coded using corresponding modality‐specific mechanisms (see also recent research consistent with this proposal: Lavan & Mcgettigan, 2019; Lavan et al, 2020). Nevertheless, although initial coding and recognition processes are physiologically independent, once face or voice representations are accessed (Belin et al, 2004), cross‐modal familiar identity‐related information and representations (i.e., name, face, voice) can be linked (for a recent review see Tsantani et al, 2019).…”

The Time Course of Person Perception From Voices: A Behavioral Study

“…The presence of such a hierarchy and possible interactions between different person characteristics may thus also explain more generally how overgeneralization effects of perceived gender, age, and beyond on trait or person perception may arise (Zebrowitz, 2011). For example, the rapid perception of a voice being female may restrict the relatively slower impressions of that person's trustworthiness to being relatively high (Schirmer et al, 2020; see also Lavan & McGettigan, 2023).…”

“…Are all impressions initially established along a similar time course, or are there any differences between the different characteristics? A model of person perception from voices (Lavan & McGettigan, 2023) has recently proposed that, on the one hand, person perception from voices could be a hierarchical or, perhaps, temporally staggered process in which different person characteristics are perceived at different stages of a processing hierarchy. On the other hand, person perception could be a holistic process, in which listeners perceive voices on the basis of meaningful, socially complex percepts (e.g., "sounds like a Valley Girl/city banker"; cf.…”

“…Upon hearing a voice, listeners spontaneously form a detailed and multivariate impression of the person whose voice they just heard (Lavan, 2023;Lavan & McGettigan, 2023). Consequently, listeners perceive a wide range of person characteristics from the voice, such as a person's age, gender, body size, traits (e.g., trustworthiness, dominance), and social characteristics (e.g., social class, level of education, occupation; Bayard et al, 2001;McAleer et al, 2014;Moyse, 2014;Owren et al, 2007;Rendall et al, 2007).…”

Talker and accent familiarity yield advantages for voice identity perception: A voice sorting study

“…We therefore conclude that our study provides further evidence that voice identity perception is a multifaceted and possibly interactive process between aspects of voice and speech perception. During voice identity processing, listeners are likely to use any information available to them to advance their perceptual goals, irrespective of which processing pathway it may primarily belong to (Kreiman & Sidtis, 2011 ; Lavan & McGettigan, 2019 ). However, there is also a hierarchy of effects, where the beneficial effects of familiarity with a general speaking style (e.g., accent) are dependent on coexisting familiarity with the specific talkers being heard in the task.…”