Effects of imagining speakers’ voices on the retention of words presented visually

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Abstract
Human subjects [Ss] were introduced to 1 male and 1 female voice by a tape recording with instructions to attend to characteristics of the voices. Then 18 pairs of words were presented visually on slides. The Ss task during each 10-s interslide interval was to repeat silently the pair of words over and over again in the male voice, in the female voice or in the Ss own voice. A surprise recognition test for the words indicated that the words were more likely to be recognized if they were spoken in the same voice at test as was used to repeat them during presentation. Recognition of the words repeated in the Ss own voice was not affected by the sex of the speaker at test. In a 2nd experiment different speakers were used at test than those used by the Ss to repeat the words. The interaction between the sex of voice used at encoding and at test was significant, but recognition was generally lower than in the 1st experiment. It was not necessary to assume that Ss had literal copies of spoken words in memory but speaker''s voice did form an integral part of the verbal memory code and its influence was specific and to a given class of speakers (male or female).

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