The Study Of Other Race Effect In Voice Recognition

Other race effect refers to people recognize faces from own group more quickly and more correctly than faces from other group. A majority of studies demonstrate that other-race effect widely and steadily exists in face recognition. Moreover, such own group bias is found not only between different races, but also between sex groups and age groups and so on. For example, some studies have found that females recognize faces better than males, and they also recognize faces from own sex group better than faces from other sex group. Though human voice differs from human face in physical structures,but it carries human’s information such as sex,age, and emotion states,which is highly similar as face. The study of other race effect in voice recognition has important practical meaning for earwitness and interpersonal communication. We wonder whether there are sex differences and own sex bias in voice recognition. Moreover, many researches have demostrated that it exists language familarity effect in voice recognition.The language familarity effect refers to higher accuracy rate in recognizing voices which speak in familiar language than in recognizing voices which speak in unfamiliar language.Most of studies in language familarity effect come from western countries,and under the influences of Chinese culture,people in each region have their own language named as dialect,and there also exists official languge called Mandarin which is widely used in China.For Chinese students,they are not only familiar with their own dialect,but also familiar with Mandarin, and they also have experiences of English learning in school.By setting the condition of separately recognizing voices which speak in native dialect or normative dialect, and the condition of separately recognizing voices which speak in Mandarin or English,the present study aims for further investigation of languge familarity effect and the influences of listeners’sex,voices’sex and languages on voice recognition under the influences of Chinese culture.The study has investigated the sex differences in voice recognition ability and the influences of different languages on voice recognition by conducting three experiments.And the consequences are listed as followings:(1) Sex differences in voice recognition ability are related with voices’sex and language.(2) Women’s ability of recognizing different sex voices are not related with voices’language, but men’s ability of recognizing different sex voices are related with voices’language.(3)Women can recognise the voices of person who speak two different languages,but men are fail to do that.(4)Language familarity effect in voice recognition is not related with language proficiency.