The effect of participation in a conversation on recognition and identification of the speakers' voices

Subjects' recognition of their own voice, the voice of a person they had a conversation with, and the voices of two people they heard converse, were compared. They listened to or conversed with each voice for five minutes and then attempted to recognize each voice from among 26 voices saying the same test phrase. In general, subjects recognized the voice of their conversational partner better than the voices of people they had listened to passively. They did not recognize their own voice better than that of their partner. Subjects who recognized their own voice always identified it without error. Although subjects correctly identified other voices they correctly recognized, they also falsely identified voices they falsely recognized. These results are discussed with respect to their practical implications for voice identification by witnesses in legal proceedings and with respect to current theories of memory.