Stimulus complexity matters when you hear your own voice: Attention effects on self-generated voice processing

Abstract

The ability to discriminate self- and non-self voice cues is a fundamental aspect of self-awareness and subserves self-monitoring during verbal communication. Nonetheless, the neurofunctional underpinnings of self-voice perception and recognition are still poorly understood. Moreover, how attention and stimulus complexity influence the processing and recognition of one's own voice remains to be clarified. Using an oddball task, the current study investigated how self-relevance and stimulus type interact during selective attention to voices, and how they affect the representation of regularity during voice perception. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 18 right-handed males. Pre-recorded self-generated (SGV) and non-self (NSV) voices, consisting of a nonverbal vocalization (vocalization condition) or disyllabic word (word condition), were presented as either standard or target stimuli in different experimental blocks. The results showed increased N2 amplitude to SGV relative to NSV stimuli. Stimulus type modulated later processing stages only: P3 amplitude was increased for SGV relative to NSV words, whereas no differences between SGV and NSV were observed in the case of vocalizations. Moreover, SGV standards elicited reduced N1 and P2 amplitude relative to NSV standards. These findings revealed that the self-voice grabs more attention when listeners are exposed to words but not vocalizations. Further, they indicate that detection of regularity in an auditory stream is facilitated for one's own voice at early processing stages. Together, they demonstrate that self-relevance affects attention to voices differently as a function of stimulus type.

Phonological and temporal regularities lead to differential ERP effects in self- and externally generated speech

“…The N1 peak was determined as a negativity in the time window 100 – 300 ms following stimulus onset, P2 as a positivity following the N1 peak up until 400 ms. These time windows are later than the classically observed N1 and P2 windows, however, a relative delay is consistent with the nature of the stimuli due to their complexity (Conde et al, 2018) and slow onset rise time (Onishi & Davis, 1968). Furthermore, broad time windows were selected to determine the individual peak as we anticipated variability in their timing due to the variability of the individual stimuli (i.e., variations in rise time of first syllable between participants and between first and second syllable stress).…”

Mechanism underlying the self‐enhancement effect of voice attractiveness evaluation: self‐positivity bias and familiarity effect

“…People usually believe that they are more competent, moral and respectable, or they even consider themselves to be more humane and less affected by human weaknesses than others (Brown, 2012). Many studies have demonstrated self‐positivity bias from various aspects, such as self‐face (Alzueta et al , 2019; Mora, Cowie, Banissy & Cocchini, 2018; Tacikowski, Jednorog, Marchewka & Nowicka, 2011), self‐voice (Conde, Gonalves & Pinheiro, 2018; Rosa et al , 2008), self‐label (Sui et al , 2012), etc. Thus, the present study provided empirical evidence supporting self‐positivity bias from the perspective of self‐voice attractiveness.…”

EEG Spatiotemporal Patterns Underlying Self-other Voice Discrimination

“…(Conde et al 2016) confirmed this finding and narrowed the P3 reduction down to experimental stimuli consisting of simple vocalizations, compared to words. However, in active oddball paradigms requiring attentional processes, the P3 amplitude increased for self-voices compared to other voices, indicating that one's own voice has a greater affective salience than an unfamiliar voice (Conde et al 2015(Conde et al , 2018. However, Liu et al (2019) failed to replicate the differences in P3 component between selfand other voices, while showing an increased parietal N400 amplitude for self-voices when uttering other names but not the own name.…”