An Evaluation of the Effect of Various Voice Qualities on Memory Retention

Abstract

In the classroom environment, the main objective of teachers is to help students learn and understand certain concepts and topics given in class. The manner in which these topics are presented could affect the ability of students to retain the information discussed by their teachers. Based on a study done by Jonah E. Rockoff on the impact of individual teachers on student achievement, teacher quality does have a significant effect on test results of students[1]. Another study done by Nye, Konstantopoulos, and Hedges states that teachers accounted for about 13% of the variance in student mathematics test score gains[2]. Given that students respond differently to different professors, it would be beneficial to look into the measurable characteristics which make teachers different from each other. Since a major part of the classroom method of teaching involves teachers and professors speaking in front of their students and a lot of students depend on this to remember and recall their lessons. It is therefore necessary to know the most effective way to present the information verbally so that both the students and the teacher could achieve their goals of receiving and delivering information. This study focused on the voice characteristics of a speaker and it study aims to discover if some voice characteristics such as frequency and gender of the speaker have an effect on memory retention. A total of 120 college students were asked to listen to recordings of 50 random duo-syllabic words of one of the four different voice types. The voice types were high pitched female, low pitched female, high pitched male and low pitched male voices. The participants were made to list down as many words as possible by memory. Using analysis of variance, the average score of all respondents was 10.625 and the standard deviation was 5.483. The scores ranged from 3 to 33, and the median was 10. The p-values of the gender of the listener and the interaction of the gender of the listener with the voice type of the speaker were 0.473 and 0.291, respectively. Given a 95% level of significance, these factors have no significance. As for the voice type of the speaker, with a 0.021 p-value, it is concluded to have significance. High pitched male voice had the highest mean score of 12.5 and low pitched male voice had the lowest means score of 8.48. It was also observed that regardless of gender, both high pitched voices had higher mean scores than the low pitched voices.