Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability
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Gabrieli_Human voice.pdf
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Author(s)
Perrachione, Tyler
Del Tufo, Stephanie N.
Gabrieli, John D. E.
Date Issued
July 2011
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Perrachione, T. K., S. N. Del Tufo, and J. D. E. Gabrieli. “Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability.” Science 333, no. 6042 (July 29, 2011): 595–595.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The ability to recognize people by their voice is an important social behavior. Individuals differ in how they pronounce words, and listeners may take advantage of language-specific knowledge of speech phonology to facilitate recognizing voices. Impaired phonological processing is characteristic of dyslexia and thought to be a basis for difficulty in learning to read. We tested voice-recognition abilities of dyslexic and control listeners for voices speaking listeners’ native language or an unfamiliar language. Individuals with dyslexia exhibited impaired voice-recognition abilities compared with controls only for voices speaking their native language. These results demonstrate the importance of linguistic representations for voice recognition. Humans appear to identify voices by making comparisons between talkers’ pronunciations of words and listeners’ stored abstract representations of the sounds in those words.
MIT Department
Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207327
