The perceptual representation of voice gender.

The perceptual representation of voice gender was examined with two experimental paradigms: identification/discrimination and selective adaptation. The results from the identification and discrimination of a synthetic male-female voice continuum indicated that voice gender perception was not categorical. In addition, results from selective adaptation experiments with natural and synthetic voice stimuli indicated that the perceptual representation of voice adapted is an auditory-based representation. Overall, these findings suggest that the perceptual representation of voice gender is auditory based and is qualitatively different from the representation of phonetic information.