Voice Perception

The voice reveals a lot about a speaker: what they want to say, how they are saying it, and who they are. Much of our research investigates this "who" part, asking questions about how human listeners identify and recognise speakers, as well as how they extract other impressions about the person behind a voice (e.g. their age, healthy, or trustworthiness).

Two theoretical papers from the VoCoLab outline some of the key ideas that have underpinned our work in this area (Lavan et al., 2019, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review; Lavan & McGettigan, 2023, Communications Psychology).

We have conducted a wealth of behavioural investigations into voice perception, including identity and first impression formation. We have also used neuroimaging methods including EEG and fMRI to examine the timecourse and representational geometries of human voice perception. An important element of our work has been to expand the literature on perception of personally familiar voices, such as close friends and relatives. More recently, we have also begun to examine how humans perceive identity and other characteristics from AI-generated voices.

We regularly publish our findings in top-ranked general science and psychology journals, including PNAS, Nature Communications, Current Biology, Psychological Science, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

For more detail on our publications, see the Google Scholar pages for Carolyn and Nadine.

Lavan & McGettigan (2023)

Lavan. Rinke, & Scharinger (2024)

Voice Production

Human vocal expression is highly flexible, enabling the speaker to react to changes in their acoustic, communicative, and social context. Our 2019 theoretical paper on "Flexible Voices" outlines the impacts of this variability on human perceivers (Lavan et al., 2019, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review). Our empirical research on voice production has investigated the bases of vocal flexibility by studying the mechanisms of spontaneous and volitional modulations during speech and other vocal behaviours.

In this strand of research, we have examined the communication chain from the brain of the vocaliser, via their vocal tract configurations, to the perceptual impacts of their vocalisations on human listeners. To do this, we have employed novel combinations real-time MRI of the vocal tract with functional MRI of the brain, acoustic analyses, and behavioural studies. We have used this framework to investigate speech sound learning, expertise and individual differences in vocal imitation, and the proposed neural generators of spontaneous vs. volitional laughter. Our open-source toolbox for segmenting vocal tract MR images is freely available for use by the research community.

We have also studied the neural and behavioural bases for volitional expression of identities and social traits in the voice, and investigated the effects of social contexts on sensorimotor vocal control using altered acoustic feedback.

For more detail on the publications arising from this research strand, see the Google Scholar pages for Carolyn and Nadine.

Belyk, Carignan, & McGettigan (2023)

Guldner et al. (2024)

Research funding

Current awards

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network: Voice Communication Sciences (Project DC18) (PI: Lavan)

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network: Voice Communication Sciences (Project DC17) (PI: McGettigan)

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship: Investigating the perception and expression of gender-diverse voices. (PI: Rosi)

Previous awards

Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership Award: SONOVOX: The Social Neuroscience of Voices (PI: McGettigan)

Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship: Perceiving people from voices. (PI: Lavan)

British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship: Voice Banking: Investigating the psychology and ethics of synthetic selves. (PI: McGettigan)

ESRC Research Project: Vocal learning in adulthood: Investigating the mechanisms of vocal imitation and the effects of training and expertise. (PI: McGettigan)

See here and here for additional information related to this project.

The Royal Society Research Grant: Linking brain activity to mouth movements during vocal learning. (PI: McGettigan)

Royal Holloway University of London: Neural systems involved in the integration of auditory and visual cues for speech comprehension. (PI: McGettigan)

Funded studentships

Graduate Research Scholarship and Overseas Research Scholarship, UCL (Student: Ziyun Zhang, Supervisor: McGettigan)

Reid Scholarship, Royal Holloway University of London (Student: Nadine Lavan, Supervisor: McGettigan)