Payne, Bryony;
(2022)
What makes a voice 'mine'? Investigating the roles of ownership, choice, and agency in the processing of self-associated voices.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis explores what it is that makes a voice ‘mine’. It examines the influence of ownership over a new voice, personal choice in selecting it, and agency in using it on whether an unfamiliar voice is processed as ‘self’. Experiment 1 shows that an unfamiliar voice can become associated with the self through ownership and subsequently prioritised in perception as a self-relevant stimulus. Experiment 2 shows that this perceptual prioritisation – and so self-bias – is not increased if the new self-voice is more representative of the self. However, Experiment 3 shows that bias is influenced by personally choosing the self-voice. Experiments 4 and 5 show that people also experience a greater sense of agency over a new voice that they own relative to a voice that is other-owned, which supports the finding that a new voice has become part of the self-concept. Experiment 6 demonstrates that self-bias for the true self-voice remains greater than bias for a new voice but, conversely, sense of agency is similar for the two. Experiment 7 shows that the greater bias for the true self-voice is diminished when that voice is presented as being owned by an ‘other’. Moreover, under these conditions, participants retain a greater sense of agency over a new self-voice relative to the true self-voice. Experiments 8 and 9 then show that the bias for a new self-voice does not extend to better memory for information expressed in that new voice. Finally, Experiment 10 shows that using a new self-voice via text-to-speech technology does not influence the degree to which that voice is perceptually prioritised, nor the sense of agency experienced over it. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that it is the knowledge that a new voice is self-owned and so ‘mine’ that quickly and pervasively shapes perceptual processing and sense of agency.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | What makes a voice 'mine'? Investigating the roles of ownership, choice, and agency in the processing of self-associated voices |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146739 |
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