Voice recognition: effects of orienting task, and a test of blind versus sighted listeners

Three experiments on memory for unfamiliar voices are reported. In the first two experiments, the type of encoding was manipulated by orienting tasks. In each study, one group rated the pleasantness of the voices, another group made judgments of pitch, and a third group performed no orienting task. Recognition memory was not correlated with encoding condition in either experiment. In Experiment 2, voice memory was better when the message remained constant from study to test than when it was changed. In Experiment 3, a group of blind adults was tested with no orienting task. The blind subjects' memory was equivalent to that of the appropriate sighted group of Experiment 2. It is proposed that voices represent a psychologically unitary stimulus that cannot be encoded with differing degrees of elaboration; therefore, voices are not sensitive to orienting tasks in the way that other classes of events, such as words and faces, are.