Gender differences in familiar voice identification

Abstract

We investigated gender differences in the identification of personally familiar voices in a gender-balanced sample of 40 listeners. From various types of utterances, listeners had to identify by name 20 speakers (10 female) among a set of 70 possible classmates who were all 12th grade pupils from the same local secondary school. Mean identification rates were 67% from sentences, and around 35% for an isolated /Hello/ or a VCV syllable. Even from non-verbal harrumphs, speakers were identified with an accuracy of 18%, i.e. highly above chance levels. Substantial individual differences were observed between listeners. Importantly, superior overall performance of female listeners was qualified by an interaction between voice gender and listener gender. Male listeners exhibited an own-gender bias (i.e. better identification for male than female voices), whereas female listeners identified voices of both genders at similar levels. Individual own-gender identification biases were correlated with differences in reported contact to a speaker's voice and voice distinctiveness. Overall, the present study establishes a number of factors that account for substantial individual differences in personal voice identification.