Talker and accent familiarity yield advantages for voice identity perception: A voice sorting study

In the current study, we examine and compare the effects of talker and accent familiarity in the context of a voice identity sorting task, using naturally varying voice recording samples from the TV show Derry Girls. Voice samples were thus all spoken with a regional accent of UK/Irish English (from [London]derry). We tested four listener groups: Listeners were either familiar or unfamiliar with the TV show (and therefore the talker identities) and were either highly familiar or relatively less familiar with Northern Irish accents. Both talker and accent familiarity significantly improved accuracy of voice identity sorting performance. However, the talker familiarity benefits were overall larger, and more consistent. We discuss the results in light of a possible hierarchy of familiarity effects and argue that our findings may provide additional evidence for interactions of speech and identity processing pathways in voice identity perception. We also identify some key limitations in the current work and provide suggestions for future studies to address these.