Listen to yourself! Prioritization of self-associated and own voice cues

Recent evidence suggests that voice-cues associated with the self can activate attentional biases in cognition (Payne et al., 2021), mirroring self-prioritization effects in the visual domain. Here, we report two experiments that replicate Payne et al.’s vocal self-prioritization effect (Exp 1), and extend it by including a novel ‘own-voice’ manipulation (Exp 2). In Exp 1 (N=35 UK male adults), a voice-label matching task comprising three external voices showed that reaction time and accuracy are improved when the voice cue is associated with a self-label (‘you’), relative to a ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ label. In Exp 2 (N=90 UK male adults), the voice assigned to self, friend or stranger labels was either a recording of the participants’ own voice, or an external voice. Reaction time and accuracy data showed a consistent advantage for the participant’s own-voice, even when it was assigned to the ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ label, over-riding standard self-prioritization effects. This advantage was boosted when the own-voice was assigned to the ‘self’ label. Findings are discussed in the context of vocal self-prioritization, and the implications of this research for recent technological advances that allow own-voice patterns to be artificially replicated.