Effect of Vocal-Pitch Difference on Automatic Attention to Voice Changes in Audio Messages

What is it about?

We found that the more similar the voices of two speakers sound to each other the less likely listeners are to experience an orienting response when listening to a radio commercial employing the two voices.

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Why is it important?

This article helps build theory by showing that orienting responses are not always reliably expected when a voice change occurs in an audio production. Furthermore, practitioners can benefit from these results by considering how different the announcer voices are in their multi-voiced productions. Finally, there is some preliminary data supporting the idea the listeners process radio ads differently when they first begin than later in the message.