Recognizing famous voices: influence of stimulus duration and different types of retrieval cues.

The current investigation measured the effects of increasing stimulus duration on listeners' ability to recognize famous voices. In addition, the investigation studied the influence of different types of cues on the naming of voices that could not be named before. Participants were presented with samples of famous and unfamiliar voices and were asked to decide whether or not the samples were spoken by a famous person. The duration of each sample increased in seven steps from 0.25 s up to a maximum of 2 s. Voice recognition improvements with stimulus duration were with a growth function. Gains were most rapid within the first second and less pronounced thereafter. When participants were unable to name a famous voice, they were cued with either a second voice sample, the occupation, or the initials of the celebrity. Initials were most effective in eliciting the name only when semantic information about the speaker had been accessed prior to cue presentation. Paralleling previous research on face naming, this may indicate that voice naming is contingent on previous activation of person-specific semantic information.