earticle

영어

The face overshadowing effect (FOE) has been noted in cases where recognition of voices is impaired if they are presented simultaneous to a face at encoding. The current study investigated the effect of facial concealment (with and without wearing a balaclava) and emotionality of vocal tone on the face overshadowing effect in voice identification. It was predicted that the FOE would be reduced in the case of presentation of a concealed face along with voices, as the lack of facial feature information would result in greater attention being paid to the voice. It was further anticipated that angry voices would attract more attention and result in better voice recognition and reductions in the FOE than neutral voices, as hostile voices represent a level of threat that captures attention analogous to the weapon focus effect in eyewitness memory. Results replicated the FOE in a voice plus face video presentation but, contrary to expectations; a concealed face presentation also demonstrated a FOE, with highest accuracy of voice identification in the voice only condition. Angry vocal tone had a slight tendency to result in better recognition of voices across groups and somewhat improve performance in the visual conditions. It was concluded that voice identification is as fallible and prone to error as eyewitness identification but that conditions where the voice is made salient and visual information is absent result in higher accuracy. Implications for the criminal justice system are discussed.