Listen to yourself! Prioritization of self-associated and own voice cues.

Abstract

Self-cues such as one's own name or face attract attention, reflecting a bias for stimuli connected to self to be prioritized in cognition. Recent evidence suggests that even external voices can elicit this self-prioritization effect; in a voice-label matching task, external voices assigned to the Self-identity label 'you' elicited faster responses than those assigned to 'friend' or 'stranger' (Payne et al., Br. J. Psychology, 112, 585-610). However, it is not clear whether external voices assigned to Self are prioritized over participants' own voices. We explore this issue in two experiments. In Exp 1 (N = 35), a voice-label matching task comprising three external voices confirmed that reaction time and accuracy are improved when an external voice cue is assigned to Self rather than Friend or Stranger. In Exp 2 (N = 90), one of the voice cues was replaced with a recording of the participant's own voice. Reaction time and accuracy showed a consistent advantage for the participant's own-voice, even when it was assigned to the 'friend' or 'stranger' identity. These findings show that external voices can elicit self-prioritization effects if associated with Self, but they are not prioritized above individuals' own voices. This has implications for external voice production technology, suggesting own-voice imitation may be beneficial.