EARWITNESS TESTIMONY - NEVER MIND THE VARIETY, HEAR THE LENGTH

Three aspects of voice recognition were investigated in the study repo rted here: memory for familiar voices, memory for the words spoken, an d the relative effects of length and variation in a voice extract on l ong- and short-term memory. In Experiment 1, recognition memory for th e briefly heard voice of a stranger was superior with longer extracts (p<0.01), but increasing vowel variety did not improve performance. Th is pattern was repeated for short-term memory (p<0.01) in Experiment 2 . Scores for the above task correlated significantly (p<0.05) with sco res for recognizing well-known voices. In a further test of well-known voice memory in Experiment 3, a weak and non-significant positive cor relation (r=0.29) was found between memory for well-known voices and m emory for a once-heard voice. Memory for the words spoken did not corr elate significantly with memory for the unknown voice itself. The poss ibilities of a memory-for-voices general ability, and forensic applica tions of the findings are discussed. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Lt d.