Can conceptual beliefs shape impressions from voices?

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Speech and Hearing Sciences
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• First impression formation from voices traditionally focuses on bottom-up processing of acoustic cues.
• The role of top-down processes, like social stereotypes and beliefs, in vocal impression formation is underexplored.
• Understanding both bottom-up and top-down influences is crucial for a comprehensive model of vocal perception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the contribution of top-down processes to first impression formation from voices.
• To investigate the interplay between conceptual beliefs and voice-based judgments.
• To explore how these processes generalize across different voice types and modalities.

Main Methods:

• Behavioral study involving mapping representational spaces for voice impressions and conceptual beliefs.
• Utilized Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) to compare these representational spaces.
• Examined impressions formed from typical, AI-generated, and pathological voices, across different listener groups and facial impressions.

Main Results:

• Substantial structural similarities were found between the representational spaces of voice impressions and conceptual beliefs.
• This indicates that conceptual beliefs significantly influence vocal impression formation through top-down processing.
• The observed effect was consistent across various voice types, listener samples, and even facial impressions.

Conclusions:

• Conceptual beliefs play a significant role in shaping first impressions formed from voices.
• Vocal impression research should integrate both top-down and bottom-up processing models.
• Findings support recent social psychology theories on the interaction of conceptual knowledge and perception.