title: Saying it with a natural child's voice! When affective auditory manipulations increase working memory in aging.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Working memory functions and their relations with affective auditory factors, have not been extensively investigated in aging yet.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this study, younger and older participants completed a classical working memory test (a running working memory task) pronounced by three different voices. In particular, in Experiment 1 the natural voices of a 3-year-old child, a 26-year-old young adult and an 86-year-old older adult were used for task presentation. In Experiment 2 stimuli were morphed in order to better control for sound properties across the three voices.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results showed that working memory increased for older adults compared to younger adults when the task was presented with natural voices and especially so when the task was presented in a child's voice. However, the child-voice effect disappeared with morphed voices.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Data confirm the importance of studying the relationship between auditory features and emotional variations as a possible practical means of reducing typical age-related working memory deficits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Chieti, Chieti, Italy. n.mammarella@unich.it
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mammarella
authors.forename: Beth
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fairfield
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Frisullo
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Di Domenico
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D000368:Aged / Q000523:psychology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D014831:Voice; D055815:Young Adult