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Earwitness Testimony: Never Mind the Variety, Hear the Length
Author(s) -
Cook Susan,
Wilding John
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199704)11:2<95::aid-acp429>3.0.co;2-o
Subject(s) - psychology , variation (astronomy) , variety (cybernetics) , recognition memory , memory test , short term memory , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , encoding (memory) , audiology , cognition , working memory , neuroscience , computer science , medicine , physics , management , artificial intelligence , astrophysics , economics
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.