Perception
How do we tell our own voice apart from others?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
We recognize our own voice better than others' voices when low-frequency pitch and speech details are removed, leaving only the highest vocal frequencies.
Key findings
Overall, filtering out frequencies and shifting pitch made voice recognition more difficult. However, when low-frequency speech components were completely removed, pitch shifts had no impact on accuracy, and participants recognized their own voice significantly better than their colleagues' voices (60.17% versus 49.67% accuracy). In contrast, when normal or low-frequency bands were intact, there was no significant performance difference between recognizing oneself versus others.
Methodology
To investigate self-voice recognition, researchers recruited 30 participants who were divided into familiar groups. The researchers recorded each person reading short words and then created 15 altered versions of these clips by shifting the pitch by up to 4 semitones and applying low-pass, high-pass, or normal frequency filters. Participants performed 300 test trials where they listened to these degraded clips and had to quickly identify whether the voice belonged to themselves or one of their 4 colleagues.
Limitations
This study does not show how biological sex might affect voice recognition because the sample of 30 participants was not analyzed for sex differences. Additionally, because participants listened to recorded playbacks, the study cannot represent how we recognize our own voice in daily life when we hear it live through bone conduction. Finally, the design cannot rule out that the advantage in recognizing oneself over colleagues is driven entirely by auditory familiarity rather than a dedicated cognitive mechanism for self-recognition.
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