Familiar voice recognition and unfamiliar voice discrimination are independent and unordered abilities

Abstract

One‐hundred and ten normal and thirty‐two brain‐damaged (BD) subjects were tested on voice discrimination and voice recognition protocols. The recognition task included samples of famous male voices in a multiple‐choice format; the discrimination test consisted of pairs of male voices in a same‐different task. Three findings suggest a dissociation between the two abilities. (1) Scores on the two tasks were only slightly correlated in normal subjects and were not significantly correlated in BD subjects, suggesting no obligatory relationship between performance on one task and performance on the other. (2) RBD subjects performed significantly less well than normal controls in recognition, while LBD subjects did not differ from normals; brain damage in either hemisphere affected discrimination abilities. (3) Nearly half of the BD subjects showed very large discrepancies between scores on the tasks, with chance performance on one alongside normal scores on the other. These asymmetries in performance occurred in both directions, indicating that discrimination and recognition are independent, unordered processes. Examination of CAT scans suggests that voice recognition is impaired only in right‐posterior BD, while voice discrimination is impaired in damage to the temporal lobes on either side.