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Voice notes, spoken messages recorded and sent via smartphones, have become a widespread means of communication. A likely consequence of this situation is that voice note users become more frequently exposed to recordings of their own voices (self-voices). This correlational study examined if frequent exposure to recordings of the self-voice via voice note replay was associated with improved self-voice recognition (accuracy and response latency) and self-voice liking. Participants (N = 128), regular voice note users, reported voice note replay frequency. They also reported self-voice satisfaction/liking. Finally, participants completed a novel self-voice recognition task, where, across 20 trials, they identified whether a recording was them (self-voice) or not (non-self-voice). The tendency to frequently replay voice notes was positively correlated with self-voice liking and recognition accuracy. These findings may have implications for the treatment of social anxiety disorder and auditory verbal hallucinations.

Background: Inducing hallucinations under controlled experimental conditions in non-hallucinating individuals represents a novel research avenue oriented toward understanding complex hallucinatory phenomena, avoiding confounds observed in patients. Auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVH) are one of the most common and distressing psychotic symptoms, whose etiology remains largely unknown. Two prominent accounts portray AVH either as a deficit in auditory-verbal self-monitoring, or as a result of overly strong perceptual priors. Methods: In order to test both theoretical models and evaluate their potential integration, we developed a robotic procedure able to induce self-monitoring perturbations (consisting of sensorimotor conflicts between poking movements and corresponding tactile feedback) and a perceptual prior associated with otherness sensations (i.e. feeling the presence of a non-existing another person). Results: Here, in two independent studies, we show that this robotic procedure led to AVH-like phenomena in healthy individuals, quantified as an increase in false alarm rate in a voice detection task. Robotically-induced AVH-like sensations were further associated with delusional ideation and to both AVH accounts. Specifically, a condition with stronger sensorimotor conflicts induced more AVH-like sensations (self-monitoring), while, in the otherness-related experimental condition, there were more AVH-like sensations when participants were detecting other-voice stimuli, compared to detecting self-voice stimuli (strong-priors). Conclusions: By demonstrating an experimental procedure able to induce AVH-like sensations in non-hallucinating individuals, we shed new light on AVH phenomenology, thereby integrating self-monitoring and strong-priors accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One's own voice is one of the most important and most frequently heard voices. Although it is the sound we associate most with ourselves, it is perceived as strange when played back in a recording. One of the main reasons is the lack of bone conduction that is inevitably present when hearing one's own voice while speaking. The resulting discrepancy between experimental and natural self-voice stimuli has significantly impeded self-voice research, rendering it one of the least investigated aspects of self-consciousness. Accordingly, factors that contribute to self-voice perception remain largely unknown. In a series of three studies, we rectified this ecological discrepancy by augmenting experimental self-voice stimuli with bone-conducted vibrotactile stimulation that is present during natural self-voice perception. Combining voice morphing with psychophysics, we demonstrate that specifically self-other but not familiar-other voice discrimination improved for stimuli presented using bone as compared with air conduction. Furthermore, our data outline independent contributions of familiarity and acoustic processing to separating the own from another's voice: although vocal differences increased general voice discrimination, self-voices were more confused with familiar than unfamiliar voices, regardless of their acoustic similarity. Collectively, our findings show that concomitant vibrotactile stimulation improves auditory self-identification, thereby portraying self-voice as a fundamentally multi-modal construct.

People evaluated their own voices as sounding more attractive than others rated their voices (i.e., self‐enhancement effect from the perspective of the rater, termed "SE_rater"), and people also rated their own voices as more attractive than the voices of others (i.e., self‐enhancement effect from the perspective of the voice, termed "SE_voice"). The aim of the present study is to explore whether the gender context (i.e., same‐sex and opposite‐sex rating context) could influence the SE effect of voice attractiveness evaluation. Male and female participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of their own voices and other participants' voices, either in a same‐sex session or an opposite‐sex session. The results demonstrated both the SE_rater and SE_voice effect in the same‐sex and opposite‐sex contexts, for both male and female. More importantly, we found that the SE_rater for the male voices was significantly greater than that for the female voices in the same‐sex context whereas no such difference was found in the opposite‐sex context. In addition, the SE_voice effect in men was larger in the same‐sex context than that in the opposite‐sex context whereas the SE_voice in women was smaller in the same‐sex context than that in the opposite‐sex context. These findings indicated that the self‐enhancement effect of vocal attractiveness was modulated by the gender context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information associated with the self is prioritized relative to information associated with others and is therefore processed more quickly and accurately. Across three experiments, we examined whether a new externally‐generated voice could become associated with the self and thus be prioritized in perception. In the first experiment, participants learned associations between three unfamiliar voices and three identities (self, friend, stranger). Participants then made speeded judgements of whether voice‐identity pairs were correctly matched, or not. A clear self‐prioritization effect was found, with participants showing quicker and more accurate responses to the newly self‐associated voice relative to either the friend‐ or stranger‐ voice. In two further experiments, we tested whether this prioritization effect increased if the self‐voice was gender‐matched to the identity of the participant (Experiment 2) or if the self‐voice was chosen by the participant (Experiment 3). Gender‐matching did not significantly influence prioritization; the self‐voice was similarly prioritized when it matched the gender identity of the listener as when it did not. However, we observed that choosing the self‐voice did interact with prioritization (Experiment 3); the self‐voice became more prominent, via lesser prioritization of the other identities, when the self‐voice was chosen relative to when it was not. Our findings have implications for the design and selection of individuated synthetic voices used for assistive communication devices, suggesting that agency in choosing a new vocal identity may modulate the distinctiveness of that voice relative to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voices are fundamentally social stimuli, and their importance to the self may be underpinned by how far they can be used to express the self and achieve communicative goals. This paper examines how self-bias and agency over a synthesised voice is altered when that voice is used to represent the self in social interaction. To enable participants to use a new voice, a novel two-player game was created, in which participants communicated online using a text-to-speech (TTS) synthesised voice. We then measured self-bias and sense of agency attributed to this synthesised voice, comparing participants who had used their new voice to interact with another person (n = 44) to a control group of participants (n = 44) who had been only briefly exposed to the voices. We predicted that the new, synthesised self-voice would be more perceptually prioritised after it had been self-produced. Further, that participants' sense of agency over the voice would be increased, if they had experienced self-producing the voice, relative to those who only owned it. Contrary to the hypothesis, the results indicated that both experimental participants and control participants similarly prioritised the new synthesised voice and experienced a similar degree of agency over it, relative to voices owned by others. Critically then, being able to produce the new voice in a social interaction did not modulate bias towards it nor participant's sense of agency over it. These results suggest that merely having ownership over a new voice may be sufficient to generate a perceptual bias and a sense of agency over it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The aim of the present study was to explore whether people consider their own voice to be more attractive than others and whether the self‐enhancement bias of one's own voice could be generalised to other variants of self‐voice. Method Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, female and male participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of three types of audio recordings (numbers, vowels, words) from same‐sex participants. In Experiment 2, the participants were instructed to rate the attractiveness of six types of audio signals: their own original voice, their recorded voice, a “pitch+20-Hz” audio recording, a “pitch−20-Hz” audio recording, a “loudness+10 dB” audio recording, and a “loudness−10 dB” audio recording. The participants also rated the similarity between the given audio signals and their own voices. Results Experiment 1 showed that the participants rated their own audio recordings as more attractive than others rated their audio recordings, and they rated their own audio recordings as more attractive than those of others. Experiment 2 revealed that the participants rated the recorded voices and the “loudness+/−10 dB” audio recordings as more attractive and similar than the “pitch+/−20-Hz” audio recordings. Conclusions The present study demonstrates that people evaluate their own voices as more attractive than the voices of others and that the self‐enhancement bias of voice attractiveness can be generalised to similar and familiar versions of self‐voice.

The aim of the present study was to determine whether the self‐enhancement effect of voice attractiveness evaluation is due to general self‐positivity bias and/or the familiarity effect. The participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of their own voice, a friend's voice and strangers' voices. In addition, a self‐reference valence (SR‐valence) task was adopted in the experiment. Significant self‐enhancement effects in voice attractiveness ratings were demonstrated, regardless of whether the participants recognized their self‐voice or not. However, the friend‐enhancement effect was found in only those participants who successfully recognized their friend's voice. Moreover, a significant correlation was found between self‐positivity bias in the SR‐valence task and the self‐enhancement effect (but not the friend‐enhancement effect). Our findings suggest that both the familiarity effect and self‐positivity bias account for the vocal self‐enhancement effect, and the influence of self‐positivity bias could be implicit. The present study thus provides empirical evidence to clarify the potential explanations for the self‐enhancement of voice attractiveness assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational outcomes for looked after children (LAC) in the UK are a priority for national and local government. This study explored the impact of the ARROW literacy intervention with LAC who had been identified by their schools as requiring literacy support. ARROW is a multi-sensory, computer-based programme, designed to increase spelling and reading attainment through self-voice feedback. ARROW was delivered to 33 LAC at Key Stage 2, with children receiving 6–10 sessions of ARROW over 3–4 weeks. Pre and post-intervention scores for reading and spelling were investigated using repeated measures and ratio gains. Analysis showed that students who received ARROW made measurable gains in reading and spelling levels as predicted by previous research. Results are critically discussed and possible underlying cognitive and pedagogical processes involved in the use of the self-voice, a central feature of ARROW, are explored. Implications for further research are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of the present study was to explore whether people consider their own voice to be more attractive than others and whether the self‐enhancement bias of one's own voice could be generalised to other variants of self‐voice. Method: Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, female and male participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of three types of audio recordings (numbers, vowels, words) from same‐sex participants. In Experiment 2, the participants were instructed to rate the attractiveness of six types of audio signals: their own original voice, their recorded voice, a "pitch+20 Hz" audio recording, a "pitch−20 Hz" audio recording, a "loudness+10 dB" audio recording, and a "loudness−10 dB" audio recording. The participants also rated the similarity between the given audio signals and their own voices. Results: Experiment 1 showed that the participants rated their own audio recordings as more attractive than others rated their audio recordings, and they rated their own audio recordings as more attractive than those of others. Experiment 2 revealed that the participants rated the recorded voices and the "loudness+/−10 dB" audio recordings as more attractive and similar than the "pitch+/−20 Hz" audio recordings. Conclusions: The present study demonstrates that people evaluate their own voices as more attractive than the voices of others and that the self‐enhancement bias of voice attractiveness can be generalised to similar and familiar versions of self‐voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social interactions, people have to pay attention both to the 'what' and 'who'. In particular, expressive changes heard on speech signals have to be integrated with speaker identity, differentiating e.g. self- and other-produced signals. While previous research has shown that self-related visual information processing is facilitated compared to non-self stimuli, evidence in the auditory modality remains mixed. Here, we compared electroencephalography (EEG) responses to expressive changes in sequence of self- or other-produced speech sounds using a mismatch negativity (MMN) passive oddball paradigm. Critically, to control for speaker differences, we used programmable acoustic transformations to create voice deviants that differed from standards in exactly the same manner, making EEG responses to such deviations comparable between sequences. Our results indicate that expressive changes on a stranger's voice are highly prioritized in auditory processing compared to identical changes on the self-voice. Other-voice deviants generate earlier MMN onset responses and involve stronger cortical activations in a left motor and somatosensory network suggestive of an increased recruitment of resources for less internally predictable, and therefore perhaps more socially relevant, signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Atypical self-processing is an emerging theme in autism research, suggested by lower self-reference effect in memory, and atypical neural responses to visual self-representations. Most research on physical self-processing in autism uses visual stimuli. However, the self is a multimodal construct, and therefore, it is essential to test self-recognition in other sensory modalities as well. Self-recognition in the auditory modality remains relatively unexplored and has not been tested in relation to autism and related traits. This study investigates self-recognition in auditory and visual domain in the general population and tests if it is associated with autistic traits. Methods: Thirty-nine neurotypical adults participated in a two-part study. In the first session, individual participant's voice was recorded and face was photographed and morphed respectively with voices and faces from unfamiliar identities. In the second session, participants performed a 'self-identification' task, classifying each morph as 'self' voice (or face) or an 'other' voice (or face). All participants also completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). For each sensory modality, slope of the self-recognition curve was used as individual self-recognition metric. These two self-recognition metrics were tested for association between each other, and with autistic traits. Results: Fifty percent 'self' response was reached for a higher percentage of self in the auditory domain compared to the visual domain (t = 3.142; P < 0.01). No significant correlation was noted between self-recognition bias across sensory modalities (t = -0.165, P = 0.204). Higher recognition bias for self-voice was observed in individuals higher in autistic traits (tAQ = 0.301, P = 0.008). No such correlation was observed between recognition bias for self-face and autistic traits (tAQ = -0.020, P = 0.438). Conclusions: Our data shows that recognition bias for physical self-representation is not related across sensory modalities. Further, individuals with higher autistic traits were better able to discriminate self from other voices, but this relation was not observed with self-face. A narrow self-other overlap in the auditory domain seen in individuals with high autistic traits could arise due to enhanced perceptual processing of auditory stimuli often observed in individuals with autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the neural processes underlying own voice discrimination using electrophysiological methods. Event-related potentials were recorded while healthy subjects ( n = 17) heard passively three oddball sequences composed of recordings of the French vowel/a/pronounced either by the participant her/himself or by two unknown persons. The results indicated that, although the mismatch negativity (MMN) displayed similar peak latency and amplitude in both conditions, the subsequent P3a clearly distinguished the two conditions since its amplitude was significantly smaller for own voice discrimination than for that of unknown voices. Moreover, the own voice discriminative response was associated with an early pre-MMN response. This early response involved a left inferior frontal component, the activity of which lasted throughout the time course of the discriminative response, which included both MMN and P3a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes up the proposal, originally postulated by George Miller in the US (Miller, 1969) and later taken up by Harry Kay in the UK (Kay, 1972), that psychologists should work through non-psychologists to help alleviate social problems. Specifically it evaluates a reading intervention programme devised by educational psychologists and delivered by teaching assistants specially trained by a psychologist. The article assesses the extent to which a psychologist, working through school personnel, added value to the education process within participating schools, the nature of that value and the challenges that had to be overcome. Results showed significant group level improvements in word recognition abilities amongst readers with delayed reading, although the extent of these improvements varied according to school and age with older pupils benefiting more than younger ones. Girls gained more than boys, but this difference was not statistically significant. It was also demonstrated that the programme could be delivered to schools on a low budget including the training of school personnel and taught effectively by non-professional teachers with minimum disruption. It was concluded that the service-delivery approach taken was in keeping with the new expectations of professional educational psychologists and as such provides a useful model for others operating in a changing service context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now a renewed emphasis in the UK on short intensive interventions to tackle reading failure. In this paper we report on the effect of a programme based on a view that reading problems are associated with the inability of the learner to deal with speech at the level of individual speech sounds even though they may be fully competent in the production and perception of oral language. We investigated the effect of a self-voice feedback intervention programme on the word recognition abilities of pupils who were experiencing reading delay. Our sample was made up of 159 pupils aged 6-13 years, whose reading age was at least one year behind their chronological age, drawn from seven schools in England. We used a quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design with experimental and control groups using between-subjects (randomly assigned) and within-subjects (those waiting-in-line as controls before entering an intervention group) analysis. We found that those in the intervention condition made significantly greater gains in their word recognition abilities than their counterparts in control conditions or than they themselves had made prior to entering the intervention condition. We concluded that whilst the success of the programme suggests that pupils who display reading delay problems can have their word recognition abilities improved by an intense self-voice feedback intervention, at least in the short term, further work is necessary to investigate how the intervention works procedurally and the longevity of its effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forward model monitors the success of sensory feedback to an action and links it to an efference copy originating in the motor system. The Readiness Potential (RP) of the electroencephalogram has been denoted as a neural signature of the efference copy. An open question is whether imagined sensory feedback works similarly to real sensory feedback. We investigated the RP to audible and imagined sounds in a button-press paradigm and assessed the role of sound complexity (vocal vs. non-vocal sound). Sensory feedback (both audible and imagined) in response to a voluntary action modulated the RP amplitude time-locked to the button press. The RP amplitude increase was larger for actions with expected sensory feedback (audible and imagined) than those without sensory feedback, and associated with N1 suppression for audible sounds. Further, the early RP phase was increased when actions elicited an imagined vocal (self-voice) compared to non-vocal sound. Our results support the notion that sensory feedback is anticipated before voluntary actions. This is the case for both audible and imagined sensory feedback and confirms a role of overt and covert feedback in the forward model., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)