Memory for speech and voice identity in schizophrenia.
Memories of conversations are composed of what was said (speech content) and information about the speaker's voice (speaker identity). In the current study, we examined whether patients with schizophrenia would show difficulties integrating speech content and speaker identity in memory, as measured in a gender-identity (male/female) recognition task. Forty-one patients and a comparison group of 20 healthy controls took part in the study. In contrast to controls, patients demonstrated greater impairments in memory for female, but not male, voices. These results are consistent with studies of speech perception that show that female voices have more complex "vocal" characteristics and require greater integration compared with male voices, and with the context memory hypothesis of schizophrenia which suggests that memory binding impairments may result in degraded or incomplete representations of memory traces as the task requirements become increasing complex.
Waters
Flavie A V
FA
School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA, Australia. Flavie.Waters@health.wa.gov.au
Badcock
Johanna C
JC
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012737:Sex Factors; D013067:Speech Perception; D014831:Voice