title: To hear or not to hear: Voice processing under visual load.
abstract: Adaptation to female voices causes subsequent voices to be perceived as more male, and vice versa. This contrastive aftereffect disappears under spatial inattention to adaptors, suggesting that voices are not encoded automatically. According to Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert, and Viding (2004), the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli during selective attention depends on perceptual resources and working memory. Possibly due to their social significance, faces may be an exceptional domain: That is, task-irrelevant faces can escape perceptual load effects. Here we tested voice processing, to study whether voice gender aftereffects (VGAEs) depend on low or high perceptual (Exp. 1) or working memory (Exp. 2) load in a relevant visual task. Participants adapted to irrelevant voices while either searching digit displays for a target (Exp. 1) or recognizing studied digits (Exp. 2). We found that the VGAE was unaffected by perceptual load, indicating that task-irrelevant voices, like faces, can also escape perceptual-load effects. Intriguingly, the VGAE was increased under high memory load. Therefore, visual working memory load, but not general perceptual load, determines the processing of task-irrelevant voices.
authors.affiliation: Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience and DFG Research Unit Person Perception, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, 07743, Jena, Germany. romi.zaeske@uni-jena.de.|Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Jena University Hospital, Lessingstraße 2, 07740, Jena, Germany. romi.zaeske@uni-jena.de.
authors.forename: Romi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zäske
authors.affiliation: Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience and DFG Research Unit Person Perception, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, 07743, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Marie-Christin
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Perlich
authors.affiliation: Department for General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience and DFG Research Unit Person Perception, Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, 07743, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Schweinberger
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D063507:Sexism / Q000523:psychology; D013067:Speech Perception; D014796:Visual Perception; D014831:Voice; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Aftereffects; Attention; Gender; Perceptual load; Voice; Working memory