Talker-based asymmetries in memory for spoken sentences

It is well-established that memory plays a central role in the human ability to understand speech, but not all experiences with speech are remembered equally well. One hypothesis about how these asymmetries emerge is that representation strength depends on how listeners allocate cognitive resources to the speech signal, partially based on the social characteristics of the talker. To test this, we conducted three recognition memory experiments with 12 diverse, but roughly equally non-standard talkers (i.e., no speakers of mainstream American English). We manipulated attention at encoding, as well as retrieval modality. Participants heard spoken sentences at study with different test blocks: auditorily presented sentences (Exp. 1), orthographically presented sentences (Exp. 2), and images (Exp. 3). In all three experiments, memory was stronger in Full than Divided Attention. Crucially, we also found that memory performance depended heavily on the talker and that talker interacted with voice of repetition (Exp. 1) and attention (Exps. 1, 2, and 3) in complex ways. These results point to a highly dynamic, context-sensitive network of speech representations where encoding and recognition behaviors are patterned by resource allocation in addition to frequency and typicality. We discuss implications for understanding voice-based biases in everyday situations.