Auditory Priming: Implicit and Explicit Memory for Words and Voices

Five experiments explore priming effects on auditory identification and completion tasks as a function of semantic and nonsemantic encoding tasks and whether speaker's voice is same or different at study and test. Auditory priming was either unaffected by the study task manipulation (Experiments 2, 4, and 5) or was less affected than was explicit memory (Experiments 1 and 3). Study-to-test changes of speaker's voice had nonsignificant effects on priming when white noise masked target items on the identification test (Experiments 1 and 2) or the stem-completion test (Experiment 5). However, significant voice change effects were observed on priming of completion performance when stems were spoken clearly (Experiments 3 and 4). Results are consistent with the idea that a presemantic auditory perceptual representation system plays an important role in the observed priming. Alternative explanations of the presence or absence of voice change effects under different task conditions are considered.