Perceiving vocal age and gender: an adaptation approach

Area of Science:

• Auditory perception
• Psycholinguistics
• Human auditory processing

Background:

• Facial signal processing reveals independent and interactive coding of identity, expression, gender, and age.
• Interactive processing of non-linguistic vocal features, such as age and gender, is less understood.
• Adaptation paradigms effectively probe perceptual systems by inducing aftereffects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate bidirectional cross-categorical aftereffects of adaptation to vocal age and gender.
• To determine how adaptation to vocal age influences gender perception and vice versa.
• To explore the interplay between age and gender representations in voice perception.

Main Methods:

• Participants underwent prolonged exposure (adaptation) to voices varying in age (young/old) and gender (male/female).
• Perceptual biases were measured using subsequent voice perception tests, assessing vocal age aftereffects (VAAEs) and vocal gender aftereffects (VGAEs).
• Adaptor-test pairings manipulated congruency of age and gender to isolate their interactive effects.

Main Results:

• Vocal age aftereffects (VAAEs) were reduced but significant when gender changed between adaptation and test, indicating both gender-specific and independent age coding.
• Vocal gender aftereffects (VGAEs) were not modulated by age congruency.
• Young voice adaptors induced larger VGAEs than old voice adaptors, suggesting young voices are more efficient gender adaptors due to greater sexual dimorphism.

Conclusions:

• Vocal age and gender perception are partially intertwined.
• Age aftereffects rely on both gender-specific and gender-independent representations.
• Younger voices may serve as more potent adaptors for gender perception, possibly due to enhanced sexual dimorphism.