Visual Gender Cues Guide Crossmodal Selective Attending to a Gender-Congruent Voice During Dichotic Listening

Visual input of a face appears to influence the ability to selectively attend to one voice over another simultaneous voice. We examined this crossmodal effect, specifically the role face gender may have on selective attention to male and female gendered simultaneous voices. Using a within-subjects design, participants were presented with a dynamic male face, female face, or fixation cross, with each condition being paired with a dichotomous audio stream of male and female voices reciting different lists of concrete nouns. In Experiment 1a, the female voice was played in the right ear and the male voice in the left ear. In Experiment 1b, both voices were played in both ears with differences in volume mimicking the interaural intensity difference between disparately localized voices in naturalistic situations. Free recall of words spoken by the two voices immediately following stimulus presentation served as a proxy measure of attention. In both sections of the experiment, crossmodal congruity of face gender enhanced same-gender word recall. This effect indicates that crossmodal interaction between voices and faces guides auditory attention. The results contribute to our understanding of how humans navigate the crossmodal relationship between voices and faces to direct attention in social interactions such as those in the cocktail party scenario.