November 26th SSF - Bryony Payne

Talk Title: Prioritisation of self-associated voices

Abstract:

Information associated with the self is prioritised relative to information associated with others. It has been shown, for example, that stimuli assigned to the self in experiments are processed more quickly and accurately, and are better encoded in memory. In this talk, I demonstrate that is possible to give people a new voice which, as it becomes incorporated in the self, accrues a processing advantage as a self-associated stimulus. I will describe a series of experiments in which I have established that listeners show perceptual prioritisation of a new voice, as well as an increased sense of agency over that voice. Finally, I will present new data from a study that uses text-to-speech technology to investigate how these effects hold up when self- and other-associated voices are learned via a real-life social interaction.