Your Spouse's Voice Is
Easier to Hear -- And Easier to Ignore
With
so many other competing voices, having a conversation on a bustling subway or
at a crowded cocktail party takes a great deal of concentration. New research
suggests that the familiar voice of a spouse stands out against other voices,
helping to sharpen auditory perception and making it easier to focus on one
voice at a time.
"Familiar
voices appear to influence the way an auditory 'scene' is perceptually
organized," explains lead researcher Ingrid Johnsrude of Queen's
University, Canada.
Johnsrude
and her colleagues asked married couples, ages 44-79, to record themselves
reading scripted instructions out loud. Later, each participant put on a pair
of headphones and listened to the recording of his or her spouse as it played
simultaneously with a recording of an unfamiliar voice.
On some trials, participants were told to report what their spouse said; on other trials, they were supposed to report what the unfamiliar voice said. The researchers wanted to see whether familiarity would make a difference in how well the participants understood what the target voice was saying.
The
results, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the
Association for Psychological Science, show a clear benefit of listening to the
familiar voice.
Participants
tended to be much more accurate on the task when they had to listen to their
spouse's voice compared to an unfamiliar voice matched on both age and sex --
they perceived their spouse's voice more clearly. Furthermore, accuracy didn't
change as participants got older when they were listening to their spouse's
voice.
"The
benefit of familiarity is very large," Johnsrude notes. "It's on the
order of the benefit you see when trying to perceptually distinguish two sounds
that come from different locations compared to sounds that come from the same
location."
But
when participants were asked to report the unfamiliar voice, age-related
differences emerged.
Middle-aged
adults seemed to be relatively adept at following the unfamiliar voice,
especially when it was masked by their spouse's voice -- that is, they were
better at understanding the unfamiliar voice when it was masked by their
spouse's voice compared to when it was masked by another unfamiliar voice.
"The
middle-aged adults were able to use what they knew about the familiar voice to
perceptually separate and ignore it, so as to hear the unfamiliar voice
better," Johnsrude explains.
But
performance on these trials declined as the participants went up in age -- the
older the participant was, the less able he or she was to report correctly what
the unfamiliar voice was saying.
"Middle-age
people can ignore their spouse -- older people aren't able to as much,"
Johnsrude concludes.
The
researchers suggest that as people age, their ability to use what they know
about voices to perceptually organize an auditory 'scene' may become
compromised.
While
this may make it more difficult for older adults to pick out an unfamiliar
voice, it has an interesting consequence: The relative benefit of having a
familiar voice as the target actually increases with age.
"These
findings speak to a problem that is very common amongst older individuals --
difficulty hearing speech when there is background sound," Johnsrude says.
"Our study identifies a cognitive factor -- voice familiarity -- that
could help older listeners to hear better in these situations."
Co-authors
on this research include Allison Mackey, Hélène Hakyemez, Elizabeth Alexander,
and Heather Trang of Queen's University, Canada; and Robert Carlyon of the MRC
Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, England.
This
research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian
Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Trust, and the Canada
Research Chairs Program.
Story Source:
The
above story is based on materials provided by Association for
Psychological Science.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further
information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
1. I. S. Johnsrude, A. Mackey, H. Hakyemez, E.
Alexander, H. P. Trang, R. P. Carlyon. Swinging at a Cocktail Party:
Voice Familiarity Aids Speech Perception in the Presence of a Competing Voice. Psychological
Science, 2013; DOI:10.1177/0956797613482467
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Association for Psychological Science (2013, August 29). Your
spouse's voice is easier to hear -- and easier to ignore. ScienceDaily.
Retrieved August 29, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130829093316.htm