WORDS AND VOICES - EPISODIC TRACES IN SPOKEN WORD IDENTIFICATION AND RECOGNITION MEMORY

Most theories of spoken word identification assume that variable speec h signals are matched to canonical representations in memory. To achie ve this, idiosyncratic voice details are first normalized, allowing di rect comparison of the input to the lexicon. This investigation assess ed both explicit and implicit memory for spoken words as a function of speakers' voices, delays between study and test, and levels of proces sing. In 2 experiments, voice attributes of spoken words were clearly retained in memory. Moreover, listeners were sensitive to fine-grained similarity between 1st and 2nd presentations of different-voice words , but only when words were initially encoded at relatively shallow lev els of processing. The results suggest that episodic memory traces of spoken words retain the surface details typically considered as noise in perceptual systems.