Abstract
The human voice is described in dialogic linguistics as an embodiment of self in a social context, contributing to expression, perception and mutual exchange of self, consciousness, inner life, and personhood. While these approaches are subjective and arise from phenomenological perspectives, scientific facts about personal vocal identity, and its role in biological development, support these views. It is our purpose to review studies of the biology of personal vocal identity—the familiar voice pattern—as providing an empirical foundation for the view that the human voice is an embodiment of self in the social context. Recent developments in the biology and evolution of communication are concordant with these notions, revealing that familiar voice recognition (also known as vocal identity recognition or individual vocal recognition) has contributed to survival in the earliest vocalizing species. Contemporary ethology documents the crucial role of familiar voices across animal species in signaling and perceiving internal states and personal identities. Neuropsychological studies of voice reveal multimodal cerebral associations arising across brain structures involved in memory, emotion, attention, and arousal in vocal perception and production, such that the voice represents the whole person. Although its roots are in evolutionary biology, human competence for processing layered social and personal meanings in the voice, as well as personal identity in a large repertory of familiar voice patterns, has achieved an immense sophistication.
Notes
Many of the characteristics of voices hold also for faces (see Chapter 6, Kreiman and Sidtis 2011).
References
Ackermann, H., Mathiak, K., & Riecker, A. (2007). The contribution of the cerebellum to speech production and speech perception, clinical and functional imaging data. Cerebellum, 6, 202–213.
Altmann, J. (1980). Baboon mothers and infants. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Andersen, R. A. (1997). Multimodal integration for the representation of space in the posterior parietal cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 352, 1421–1428.
Aubin, T., Jouventin, P., & Hildebrand, C. (2000). Penguins use the two-voice system to recognize each other. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences, 267, 1081–1087.
Bakhtin, M. (1973). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics (2nd ed.), translated by R. W. Rotsel. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays, translated by V. W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Govender, R., & Pratto, F. (1992). The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 893–912.
Bee, M. A., & Gerhardt, H. C. (2002). Individual voice recognition in a territorial frog (Rana catesbeiana). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences, 269, 1443–1448.
Bee, M. A., Kozich, C. E., Blackwell, K. J., & Gerhardt, H. C. (2001). Individual variation in advertisement calls of territorial male green frogs, Rana Clamitans, Implications for individual discrimination. Ethology, 107, 65–84.
Belin, P., Zatorre, R. J., Lafaille, P., Ahad, P., & Pike, B. (2000). Voice-selective areas in human auditory cortex. Nature, 403, 309–312.
Benowitz, L. I., Finkelstein, S., Levine, D. N., & Moya, K. (1990). The role of the right cerebral hemisphere in evaluating configurations. In C. B. Trevarthern (Ed.), Brain circuits and functions of the mind (pp. 320–333). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benson, D. F. (1994). The neurology of thinking. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Berlin, I. (1953;1994). The hedgehog and the fox, an essay on Tolstoy’s view of history. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. (Reprinted in Russian Thinkers, Oxford: Penguin).
Berry, D. S. (1990). Vocal attractiveness and vocal babyishness: Effects on stranger, self, and friend impressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 14, 141–153.
Bertau, M.-C. (2007). On the notion of voice, An exploration from a psycholinguistic perspective with developmental implications. International Journal for Dialogical Science, 2, 133–161.
Bertau, M.-C. (2008). Voice, A pathway to consciousness as ‘social contact to oneself’. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 92–113.
Bever, T. G. (1975). Cerebral asymmetries in humans are due to the differentiation of two incompatible processes, Holistic and analytic. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 263, 251–262.
Bhatia, K. P., & Marsden, C. D. (1994). The behavioural and motor consequences of focal lesions of the basal ganglia in man. Brain, 117, 859–876.
Boone, D. (1991). Is your voice telling on you? San Diego: Singular.
Bradshaw, J. L., & Mattingly, J. B. (1995). Clinical neuropsychology, behavioral and brain science. New York: Academic.
Brown, J. W. (1988). The life of the mind, selected papers. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Brown, J. W. (1998a). Morphogenesis and mental process. In C. Pribram & J. King (Eds.), Learning as self organization (pp. 295–310). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Brown, J. W. (1998b). Foundations of cognitive metaphysics. Process Studies, 21, 79–92.
Brown, J. W. (2002). The self embodying mind. Barrytown: Station Hill Press.
Buck, R. (1993). What is this thing called subjective experience? Reflections on the neuropsychology of qualia. Neuropsychology, 7, 490–499.
Burke, E. J., & Murphy, C. G. (2007). How female barking tree frogs, Hyla gratiosa, use multiple call characteristics to select a mate. Animal Behaviour, 74, 1463–1472.
Charrier, I., Mathevon, N., & Jouventin, P. (2001). Mother’s voice recognition by seal pups. Nature, 412, 873.
Charrier, I., Mathevon, N., & Jouventin, P. (2003). Individuality in the voice of fur seal females, An analysis study of the pup attraction call in Arctocephalus tropicalis. Marine Mammal Science, 19, 161–172.
Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. (1980). Vocal recognition in free-ranging vervet monkeys. Animal Behaviour, 28, 362–367.
Cheney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. (1999). Recognition of other individuals’ social relationships by female baboons. Animal Behaviour, 58, 67–75.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error. New York: Avon Books.
DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: newborns prefer their mothers’ voice. Science, 208, 1174–1176.
Esposito, A., Demeurisse, G., Alberti, B., & Fabbro, F. (1999). Complete mutism after midbrain periaqueductal gray lesion. NeuroReport, 10, 681–685.
Fair, C. M. (1988). Memory and central nervous system organization. New York: Paragon House.
Fair, C. M. (1992). Cortical memory functions. Boston: Birkhäuser.
Feng, A. S., Arch, V. S., Yu, Z., Yu, X.-J., Xu, Z.-M., & Shen, J.-X. (2009). Neighbor–Stranger discrimination in concave-eared Torrent Frogs, Odorrana tormota. Ethology, 115, 851–856.
Fischer, J. (2004). Emergence of individual recognition in young macaques. Animal Behaviour, 67, 655–661.
Gasser, H., Amézquita, A., & Hödl, W. (2009). Who is calling? Intraspecific call variation in the aromobatid frog Allobates femoralis. Ethology, 115, 596–607.
Gazzaniga, M. S., Irvy, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2002). Cognitive neuroscience, biology of the mind. New York: Norton & Company.
Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Hansen, E. W. (1976). Selective responding by recently separated juvenile rhesus monkeys to the calls of their mothers. Developmental Psychobiology, 9, 83–88.
Haramati, S., Soroker, N., Dudai, Y., & Levy, D. A. (2008). The posterior parietal cortex in recognition memory, A neuropsychological study. Neuropsychologia, 46, 1756–1766.
Hepper, P. G., Scott, D., & Shahidullah, S. (1993). Newborn and fetal response to maternal voice. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 11, 147–153.
Hermans, H. J. M. (1996). Voicing the self, From information processing to dialogical interchange. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 31–50.
Hermans, H. J. M. (1998). The polyphony of the mind, A multivoiced and dialogical self. In J. Rowan & M. Cooper (Eds.), The plural self, polypsychic perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Insley, S. J. (2001). Mother-offspring vocal recognition in northern fur seals is mutual but asymmetrical. Animal Behaviour, 61, 129–137.
Josephs, I. (2002). ‘The Hopi in Me’. The construction of a voice in the dialogical self from a cultural psychological perspective. Theory & Psychology, 12, 162–173.
Jouventin, P. (1982). Visual and vocal signals in penguins, their evolution and adaptive characters. Advances in Ethology, 24, 1–149.
Jouventin, P., & Aubin, T. (2002). Acoustic systems are adapted to breeding ecologies, Individual recognition in nesting penguins. Animal Behaviour, 64, 747–757.
Jürgens, U. (2002). Neural pathways underlying vocal control. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 26, 235–258.
Kayser, C., & Logothetis, N. K. (2007). Do early sensory cortices integrate cross-modal information? Brain Structure & Function, 212, 121–132.
Kidd, R. (1857). Vocal culture and elocution. Cincinnati, OH: Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co.
Konopcznski, G. (2010). Les enjeux de la voix. In M. R. Castarede & G. Konopczynski (Eds.), Au commencement était la voix (pp. 33–52). Toulouse: Erès.
Kreiman, J. (1997). Listening to voices: Theory and practice in voice perception research. In K. Johnson & J. W. Mullennix (Eds.), Talker variability in speech processing (pp. 85–108). New York: Academic.
Kreiman, J., & Sidtis, D. (2011). Foundations of voice studies: Interdisciplinary approaches to voice production and perception. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell.
Laird, J. D., Wagener, J. J., Halal, M., & Szegda, M. (1982). Remembering what you feel, effects of emotion on memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 646–657.
Laver, J. (1968). Voice quality and indexical information. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 3, 43–54.
Lengagne, T., Lauga, J., & Aubin, T. (2001). Intra-syllabic acoustic signatures used by the king penguin in parent–chick recognition, An experimental approach. Journal of Experimental Biology, 204, 663–672.
Lieberman, P. (2002). Human language and our reptilian brain: The subcortical bases of speech, syntax, and thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Linell, P. (2007). On Bertau’s and other voices (Commentary on Bertau). International Journal for Dialogical Science, 2, 163–168.
Linklater, K. (1976). Freeing the natural voice. Hollywood, CA: Drama Publishers.
Locke, J. L. (2008). Cost and complexity, Selection for speech and language. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 251, 640–652.
Locke, J. L. (2009). Evolutionary developmental linguistics, Naturalization of the faculty of language. Language Sciences, 31, 33–59.
Locke, J. L., & Bogin, B. (2006). Language and life history, A new perspective on the development and evolution of human language. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 259–325.
MacLean, P. D. (1990). The triune brain in evolution. New York: Plenum.
Mann, V. A., Diamond, R., & Carey, S. (1979). Development of voice recognition, Parallels with face recognition. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 27, 153–165.
Marsden, C. D. (1982). The mysterious motor function of the basal ganglia, The Robert Wartenberg Lecture. Neurology, 32, 514–539.
Masataka, N. (1985). Development of vocal recognition of mothers in infant Japanese macaques. Developmental Psychobiology, 18, 107–114.
Masterman, D. L., & Cummings, J. L. (1997). Frontal-subcortical circuits, the anatomic basis of executive, social, and motivated behaviors. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 11, 107–114.
McComb, K., Moss, C., Sayialel, S., & Baker, L. (2002). Unusually extensive networks of vocal recognition in African elephants. Animal Behaviour, 59, 1103–1109.
Mehler, J., Bertoncini, J., Barriere, M., & Jassik-Gerschenfeld, D. (1978). Infant recognition of mother’s voice. Perception, 7, 491–497.
Mesulam, M.-M. (1990). Large-scale neurocognitive networks and distributed processing for attention, language, and memory. Annals of Neurology, 28, 597–613.
Miall, D. S. (1986). Emotion and the self: The context of remembering. British Journal of Psychology, 77, 389–397.
Neisser, U., & Jopling, D. A. (1997). The conceptual self in context: Culture, experience, self-understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Neuner, F., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2000). Neuropsychological impairments in the recognition of faces, voices, and personal names. Brain and Cognition, 44, 342–366.
Nudo, R., Plautz, E. J., & Frost, S. B. (2001). Role of adaptive plasticity in recovery of function after damage to motor cortex. Muscle & Nerve, 24, 1000–1019.
Nygaard, L. C. (2005). Linguistic and paralinguistic factors in speech perception. In D. B. Pisoni & R. E. Remez (Eds.), Handbook of speech perception. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Osatuke, K., Gray, M. A., Glick, M., Stiles, W. B., & Barkham, M. (2004). Hearing voices. Methodological issues in measuring internal multiplicity. In H. J. M. Hermans & G. Dimaggio (Eds.), The dialogical self in psychotherapy (pp. 237–254). New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Osatuke, K., Humphreys, C. L., Glick, M., Graff-Reed, R. L., McKenzie Mack, L., & Stiles, W. B. (2005). Vocal manifestations of internal multiplicity, Mary’s voices. Psychology and Psychotherapy, Theory, Research and Practice, 78, 21–44.
Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Panksepp, J. (2003). At the interface of affective, behavioral and cognitive neurosciences, Decoding the emotional feelings of the brain. Brain and Cognition, 52, 4–14.
Petkov, C. I., Kayser, C., Augath, M., & Logothetis, N. K. (2006). Functional imaging reveals numerous fields in the monkey auditory cortex. PLoS Biology, 4, e215.
Pollermann, B. Z. (2010). Qu’exprime la prosodie affective: l’état du corps ou l’état de l’esprit? Proposition d’un modèle de l’émotion et de cognition. In M. F. Castarede & G. Konopczynski (Eds.), Au commencement était la voix (pp. 97–104). Toulouse: Erès.
Purhonen, M., Kilpelainen-Lees, R., Valkonen-Korhonen, M., Karhu, J., & Lehtonen, J. (2004). Cerebral processing of mother’s voice compared to unfamiliar voice in 4-month-old infants. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 52, 257–266.
Purhonen, M., Kilpelainen-Lees, R., Valkonen-Korhonen, M., Karhu, J., & Lehtonen, J. (2005). Four-month-old infants process own mother’s voice faster than unfamiliar voices–Electrical signs of sensitization in infant brain. Cognitive Brain Research, 24, 627–633.
Querleu, D., Lefebvre, C., Titran, M., Renard, X., Morillion, M., & Crepin, G. (1984). Reactivité du nouveau-né de moins de deux heures de vie à la voix maternelle. Journal de Gynécologie, Obstétrique et Biologie de la Reproduction, 13, 125–134.
Rendall, D., Rodman, P. S., & Edmond, R. E. (1996). Vocal recognition of individuals and kin in free-ranging rhesus monkeys. Animal Behaviour, 51, 1007–1015.
Revelle, W., & Scherer, K. (2009). Personality and emotion. In D. Sander & K. Scherer (Eds.), Oxford companion to emotion and the affective sciences (pp. 304–306). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosenthal, V. (2004). Microgenesis, immediate experience and visual processes in reading. In A. Carsetti (Ed.), Seeing, thinking and knowing. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Rush, J. (1823). The Philosophy of the Human Voice, embracing its physiological history, together with a system of principles, by which criticism in the art of elocution may be rendered intelligible and instruction, definite and comprehension to which is added a brief analysis of song and recitative (5th ed.). Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott & Co.
Saint-Cyr, J. A., Taylor, A. E., & Nicholson, K. (1995). Behavior and the basal ganglia. In W. J. Weiner & A. E. Lang (Eds.), Behavioral neurology of movement disorders (pp. 1–28). New York: Raven Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 23–78). New York: Irvington.
Scherer, K. R. (1986). Vocal affect expression, A review and a model for future research. Psychological Bulletin, 99, 143–165.
Scherrer, J. A., & Wilkinson, G. S. (1993). Evening bat isolation calls provide evidence for heritable signatures. Animal Behaviour, 46, 847–860.
Schroeder, C. E., Smiley, J., Fu, K. G., O’Connell, M. N., McGinnis, T., & Hackett, T. A. (2003). Anatomical mechanisms and functional implications of multisensory convergence in early cortical processing. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 50, 5–17.
Searby, A., & Jouventin, P. (2003). Mother-lamb acoustic recognition in sheep, A frequency coding. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences, 270, 1765–1771.
Searby, A., Jouventin, P., & Aubin, T. (2004). Acoustic recognition in macaroni penguins, an original signature system. Animal Behaviour, 67, 615–625.
Shotter, J. (1996). Speaking bodies. Theory and Psychology, 6, 177–179.
Sidtis, D., & Kreiman, J. (2008). Let’s face it, Phonagnosia happens, and voice recognition is finally familiar. In M. Pachalska & M. Weber (Eds.), Neuropsychology and philosophy of mind in process. Essays in honor of Jason W. Brown (pp. 298–334). Frankfurt/Lancaster: Ontos Verlag.
Simonyan, K., & Jürgens, U. (2003). Subcortical projections of the laryngeal motor cortex in the rhesus monkey. Brain Research, 974, 43–59.
Stiles, W. B. (1999). Signs and voices in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy Research, 9, 1–21.
Stiles, W. B., Osatuke, K., Glick, M. J., & Mackay, H. C. (2004). Encounters between internal voices generate emotion, An elaboration of the assimilation model. In H. H. Hermans & G. Dimaggio (Eds.), The dialogical self in psychotherapy (pp. 91–107). New York: Brunner- Routledge.
Terrazas, A., Serafin, N., Hernandez, H., Nowak, R., & Poindron, P. (2003). Early recognition of newborn goat kids by their mother, II. Auditory recognition and evidence of an individual acoustic signature in the neonate. Developmental Psychobiology, 43, 311–320.
Torriani, M. V. G., Vannoni, E., & McElligott, A. G. (2006). Mother-young recognition in an ungulate hider species, A unidirectional process. The American Naturalist, 168, 412–420.
Van Lancker, D. (1991). Personal relevance and the human right hemisphere. Brain and Cognition, 17, 64–92.
Van Lancker, D. (1997). Rags to riches, Our increasing appreciation of cognitive and communicative abilities of the human right cerebral hemisphere. Brain and Language, 57, 1–11.
Van Lancker, D., & Canter, G. J. (1982). Impairment of voice and face recognition in patients with hemispheric damage. Brain and Cognition, 1, l85–l95.
Van Lancker, D., & Kreiman, J. (1986). Preservation of familiar speaker recognition but not unfamiliar speaker discrimination in aphasic patients. Clinical Aphasiology, 16, 234–240.
Van Lancker, D., & Kreiman, J. (1987). Unfamiliar voice discrimination and familiar voice recognition are independent and unordered abilities. Neuropsychologia, 25, 829–834.
Van Lancker, D., Cummings, J., Kreiman, J., & Dobkin, B. H. (1988). Phonagnosia, A dissociation between familiar and unfamiliar voices. Cortex, 24, 195–209.
von Kempelen, W. (1791). Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine (Mechanisms of human speech toward a description of a speaking machine). Vienna: J.B. Degen.
von Kriegstein, K., & Giraud, A.-L. (2004). Distinct functional substrates along the right superior temporal sulcus for the processing of voices. NeuroImage, 22, 948–955.
Werner, H. (1956). Microgenesis and aphasia. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52, 347–353.
Winer, J. A., & Lee, C. C. (2007). The distributed auditory cortex. Hearing Research, 229, 3–13.
Acknowledgements
Preparation of this paper was supported in part by grant DC01797 and by R01 DC007658 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sidtis, D., Kreiman, J. In the Beginning Was the Familiar Voice: Personally Familiar Voices in the Evolutionary and Contemporary Biology of Communication. Integr. psych. behav. 46, 146–159 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-011-9177-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-011-9177-4