RECOGNIZING FAMOUS VOICES - INFLUENCE OF STIMULUS-DURATION AND DIFFERENT TYPES OF RETRIEVAL CUES

The current investigation measured the effects of increasing stimulus duration on listeners' ability to recognize famous voices. In addition , the investigation studied the influence of different types of cues o n the naming of voices that could not be named before. Participants we re presented with samples of famous and unfamiliar voices and were ask ed to decide whether or not the samples were spoken by a famous person . The duration of each sample increased in seven steps from 0.25 s up to a maximum of 2 s. Voice recognition improvements with stimulus dura tion were with a growth Function. Gains were most rapid within the fir st second and less pronounced, thereafter. When participants were unab le to name a famous voice, they were cued with either a second voice s ample, the occupation, or the initials of the celebrity. Initials were most effective in eliciting the name only when semantic information a bout the speaker had been accessed prior to cue presentation. Parallel ing previous research on face naming, this may indicate that voice nam ing is contingent on previous activation of person-specific semantic i nformation.