Electrophysiological Correlates of Voice Memory for Young and Old Speakers in Young and Old Listeners

Publication date: Available online 10 August 2017 Source:Neuropsychologia Author(s): Romi Zäske, Katharina Limbach, Dana Schneider, Verena G. Skuk, Christian Dobel, Orlando Guntinas-Lichius, Stefan Robert Schweinberger Faces of one's own-age group are easier to recognize than other-age faces. Using behavioural measures and EEG, we studied whether an own-age bias (OAB) also exists in voice memory. Young (19 - 26 years) and old (60 - 75 years) participants studied young (18 – 25 years) and old (60 – 77 years) unfamiliar voices from short sentences. Subsequently, they classified studied and novel voices as “old” (i.e. studied) or “new”, from the same sentences. Recognition performance was higher in young compared to old participants, and for old compared to young voices, with no OAB. At the same time, we found evidence for higher distinctiveness of old compared to young voices, both in terms of acoustic measures and subjective ratings (independent of rater age). Analyses of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) indicated more negative-going deflections (400–1000 ms) for old compared to young voices in young participants. In old participants, we observed a reversed OLD/NEW memory effect, with overall more positive amplitudes for novel compared to studied old (but not young) voices (400–1000 ms). Time-frequency analyses revealed less beta power (16 – 26Hz) for young compared to old voices at left anterior sites, and also reduced beta power for correctly...

Source: Neuropsychologia - August 11, 2017 Category: Neurology Source Type: research