School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK.
School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK.
Cognition. 2021 May;210:104582. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104582. Epub 2021 Jan 12.
There are remarkable individual differences in the ability to recognise individuals by the sound of their voice. Theoretically, this ability is thought to depend on the coding accuracy of voices in a low-dimensional "voice-space". Here we were interested in how adaptive coding of voice identity relates to this variability in skill. In two adaptation experiments we explored first whether the aftereffect size to two familiar vocal identities can predict voice perception ability and second, whether this effect stems from general auditory skill (e.g. discrimination ability for tuning and tempo). Experiment 1 demonstrated that contrastive aftereffect sizes for voice identity predicted voice perception ability. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding and further established that this effect is unrelated to general auditory abilities or general adaptability of listeners. Our results highlight the important functional role of adaptive coding in voice expertise and suggest that human voice perception is a highly specialised and distinct auditory ability.
个体在通过声音识别个体的能力方面存在显著差异。从理论上讲，这种能力被认为取决于声音在低维“声音空间”中的编码准确性。在这里，我们感兴趣的是声音身份的自适应编码与这种技能差异有何关联。在两个适应实验中，我们首先探索了两个熟悉的声音身份的后效大小是否可以预测声音感知能力，其次，这种效果是否源于一般听觉技能（例如，音调和节奏的辨别能力）。实验 1 表明，声音身份的对比后效大小可以预测声音感知能力。在实验 2 中，我们复制了这一发现，并进一步证明这种效果与一般听觉能力或听众的一般适应性无关。我们的研究结果突出了自适应编码在声音专业知识中的重要功能作用，并表明人类声音感知是一种高度专业化和独特的听觉能力。
