Processing Female and Male Voices: A Word Spotting Experiment

Abstract

Several previous studies showed that synthetic vowel identification is more difficult for voices with a high f₀ (the lowest frequency that defines voice pitch), but it is not clear whether this means that female voices, which generally have a higher f₀, are processed more slowly than male voices. A word spotting experiment was conducted with 25 French native listeners (8 men, 17 women; M age = 27.6 yr., SD = 10.8). Words produced by four male and four female speakers were played to the participants. Their task was to press a button every time they identified the target word “étage.” Response times were collected and compared in four different conditions: male voice preceded by male voices, female voice preceded by female voices, male voice preceded by female voices, and female voice preceded by male voices. Results showed that both sexes' voices were processed equally fast. Moreover, no significant correlation was found between mean f₀ of the target word and response time. Nevertheless, when a target word produced by a male speaker occurred after several words produced by a female speaker (or vice-versa) the listener's RT decreased, suggesting that male and female voices are processed as two different entities.