Effects of harmonization between word's meaning and voice quality on memory

In daily life, voice qualities are often harmonized to word meanings. To investigate effects of harmonization, psychological experiments manipulating harmonization between word meanings and voice qualities were conducted using four different voices. Half the test items were presented in an (incidental) learning phase, then an auditory word-fragment completion (WFC) and auditory recognition tasks were executed. Guessing in the WFC was better in the harmonized condition than neutral, which in turn better than in the non-harmonized condition. They imply the mood-congruency effect led by voice qualities, where access to words in lexicon was facilitated by use voice quality cues.[U+3000]Looking at memory tests, the harmonized condition showed less priming in WFC but higher recognition, while the non-harmonization condition showed larger priming and less explicit memory, maybe because of access difficulties and/or harder estimation of speaker’s intention. The connotative meanings of voice qualities facilitate word’s retrieval, resulting some interacting effects on memory.