Matching Speaking to Singing Voices and the Influence of Content

We tested whether speaking voices of unfamiliar people could be matched to their singing voices, and, if so, whether the content of the utterances would influence this matching performance. Our hypothesis was that enough acoustic features would remain the same between speaking and singing voices such that their identification as belonging to the same or different individuals would be possible even upon a single hearing. We also hypothesized that the contents of the utterances would influence this identification process such that voices uttering words would be easier to match than those uttering vowels.

We used a within-participant design with blocked stimuli that were counterbalanced using a Latin square design. In one block, mode (speaking vs singing) was manipulated while content was held constant; in another block, content (word vs syllable) was manipulated while mode was held constant, and in the control block, both mode and content were held constant.

Participants indicated whether the voices in any given pair of utterances belonged to the same person or to different people.

Cross-mode matching was above chance level, although mode-congruent performance was better. Further, only speaking voices were easier to match when uttering words.

We can identify speaking and singing voices as the same or different even on just a single hearing. However, content interacts with mode such that words benefit matching of speaking voices but not of singing voices. Results are discussed within an attentional framework.