why i can't recognize my own voice ?

[fresh]

My own voice sounds so unfamiliar. I can not explain why.

The uncanny thing is i can easily recognize others' voices. They no need to say a word, just sigh, hum, yawn and sneeze, I can tell who they are.

why I can't recognize my own voice ?

[Phi for All]

People hear your voice through the medium of air, but you're hearing your own voice via the air AND the bones in your head. The bones lower the frequency of the vibrations from your voice and it sounds different to you until you hear your voice recorded.

 

What's recorded is actually the way you sound to others. We sometimes hate it because we're so familiar with how we perceive how we sound, and that perception is at odds with recordings.

 

Imagine how someone like James Earl Jones sounds in his own head. He's probably like, "My voice doesn't sound DEEP enough!"

[Acme]

Because you are used to hearing your voice as it is delivered to your eardrums through vibrations of your jaw, skull, and other tissues. The more you listen to recordings of your voice the more likely you will recognize recordings of your voice.

[SirSmattering]

There's also a reflex known as the Vocalisation Induced Stapedius Reflex which lowers the sound of your voice by around 20 dB. Your stapedius is tiny muscle in your ear that can reduce the perceived loudness of a sound, and as you speak your brain uses this muscle to lower the sound of your own voice via a reflex ark.

 

Not sure how relevant that is to being unable to recognise your own voice - but it's interesting to note that we always perceive ourselves quieter than we're actually being!

[Lizzie L]

Those are the standard answers but I think there's more to it than that (just a hunch). After all, we are quite good at recognising other people's voices even when filtered through doors or over bad telephone lines. I think it may be part of the same phenomenon by which you can't tickle yourself - or think that the other guy punched you harder than you punched them.

 

Our brains are set up (very efficiently) to signal differences between what we expect and what actually happens - the idea is that we make "forward models" of the world, and only "notice" when the model fails to fit the reality perfectly. With our own actions, we have very good forward models, because they include an efferent copy of the motor program we are about to execute. So nothing surprises us about what we hear when the voice is our own. However, when we hear it back on a recording, we don't have that efferent copy, so we hear it as we hear other voices - with all the little departures from expectation that alert us to the characteristics of a particular speaker.

[Ringer]

So you're going to go ahead and not go with evidence and go with a hunch?

[Ophiolite]

So you're going to go ahead and not go with evidence and go with a hunch?

You automatically go with the presumption that our current understanding is wholly complete and therefore reject, without due consideration, a hypothesis that offers an additional explanation for the phenomenon.

 

So you're going to go ahead and not go with the scientific method and go with a knee-jerk reaction?

[Lizzie L]

So you're going to go ahead and not go with evidence and go with a hunch?

 

Well, it's an extrapolation based on good evidence about other phenomena in which we discount sensory stimuli that we can correlate with our own actions. Another phenomenon is not noticing the sound of your own footsteps but being very alert if they stop correlating with your own steps. And there's a lot of research on illusions of agency, and also of course on delusions of non-agency (alien hand syndrome, for instance, or auditory hallucinations).

 

So that's the origin of my "hunch". It's testable, and maybe someone has tested it specifically. It's sort of related to my own area of research, which is why I thought of it.

 

And as I've never found the "it's filtered through your head" totally convincing (we seem to be able to recognise other voices quite easily filtered through lots of things), this struck me as potentially a better explanation, and fits with a fair bit of evidence.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Lizzie L

[Acme]

Well, it's an extrapolation based on good evidence about other phenomena in which we discount sensory stimuli that we can correlate with our own actions. Another phenomenon is not noticing the sound of your own footsteps but being very alert if they stop correlating with your own steps. And there's a lot of research on illusions of agency, and also of course on delusions of non-agency (alien hand syndrome, for instance, or auditory hallucinations).

 

So that's the origin of my "hunch". It's testable, and maybe someone has tested it specifically. It's sort of related to my own area of research, which is why I thought of it.

 

And as I've never found the "it's filtered through your head" totally convincing (we seem to be able to recognise other voices quite easily filtered through lots of things), this struck me as potentially a better explanation, and fits with a fair bit of evidence.

I like your answer and original post for putting a new voice on the issue. I do however think some qualification/justification is due for the claim that we "easily" recognize the voices of others when filtered. What is the basis for this claim? If it is true, is it true only for voices familiar to us in both unfiltered and filtered circumstances, or is it equally true for unfamiliar voices? To clarify, are our easily-recognized-filtered-other-voices easily recognized because we have repeatedly heard them filtered?

 

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lizzie L]

I don't know the answer to your question, my idea was definitely speculative! But it has always struck me that you (well l) can identify people from their voices quite well, even if they are behind a door, say, and the difference between the muffled sound and the their unmuffled voice is much less than the difference between what I hear when I talk and what I hear on a recording! For a start, I don't think of myself as having any accent particularly (not surprisingly), yet when I hear myself I can hear traces of all the places I've lived - from Scotland to Canada to middle England!

[Ringer]

You automatically go with the presumption that our current understanding is wholly complete and therefore reject, without due consideration, a hypothesis that offers an additional explanation for the phenomenon.

 

So you're going to go ahead and not go with the scientific method and go with a knee-jerk reaction?

 

I apparently didn't read the comment as well as I should have, probably because I was tired and had my 'just a hunch' visors on. In all honest I can't even remember what I thought about the comment because when I reread it the explanation it's not really objectionable. Perhaps I was against speculative answers in the main sub-forum, but due to my apparent need for a one-liner we'll never know.

 

 

Well, it's an extrapolation based on good evidence about other phenomena in which we discount sensory stimuli that we can correlate with our own actions. Another phenomenon is not noticing the sound of your own footsteps but being very alert if they stop correlating with your own steps. And there's a lot of research on illusions of agency, and also of course on delusions of non-agency (alien hand syndrome, for instance, or auditory hallucinations).

 

So that's the origin of my "hunch". It's testable, and maybe someone has tested it specifically. It's sort of related to my own area of research, which is why I thought of it.

 

And as I've never found the "it's filtered through your head" totally convincing (we seem to be able to recognise other voices quite easily filtered through lots of things), this struck me as potentially a better explanation, and fits with a fair bit of evidence.

 

Apologies to you, it seems my reading comprehension was on vacation. When I see 'just a hunch' I immediately assume a pseudo-sciencey, pseudo-philosophical rambling follows which may have made me immediately biased toward your comment.

[Lizzie L]

No problem It could be wrong anyway. But it does have some evidence and reasoning behind it as I said.

[arc]

 

Well, it's an extrapolation based on good evidence about other phenomena in which we discount sensory stimuli that we can correlate with our own actions. Another phenomenon is not noticing the sound of your own footsteps but being very alert if they stop correlating with your own steps. And there's a lot of research on illusions of agency, and also of course on delusions of non-agency (alien hand syndrome, for instance, or auditory hallucinations).

 

So that's the origin of my "hunch". It's testable, and maybe someone has tested it specifically. It's sort of related to my own area of research, which is why I thought of it.

 

And as I've never found the "it's filtered through your head" totally convincing (we seem to be able to recognise other voices quite easily filtered through lots of things), this struck me as potentially a better explanation, and fits with a fair bit of evidence.

 

I have wondered, actually since the days when Johnny Carson was hosting the Tonight Show, if this perceived difference in ones own perception could be reduced or even erased by repeated viewing and hearing ones own recorded voice, as in the case of Mr Carson who likely watched his show later on a regular basis. Could this audio, and I think even just as important, visual, "therapy" blend or blur this personal bias?

[Dekan]

I suppose we have to bear in in mind, that the experience of "hearing your own voice recorded", is a very recent development. Until the phonograph was invented in the late 19th century, no human had ever heard an objective recording of their own voice. Therefore it's not surprising that our human brains were unprepared for this new technological experience.

 

Our brains have evolved a marvelous natural ability to recognize other people's voices. To the extent that we can easily recognize, and identify them, even when they're distorted and attenuated through such low-quality audio devices as telephones.

 

But - hearing one's own voice from an outside perspective, is an un-natural phenomenon without precedent in evolutionary history. So we need a little time to adjust to it. Such adjustment may perhaps be acquired by regular and repeated exposure, as arc suggests in #13.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Dekan

[Acme]

...

But - hearing one's own voice, from an outside perspective, is a phenomenon without precedent in evolutionary history. So we need a little time to adjust to it. ...

When disturbed by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his pride of distinction. ~ Ambrose Bierce

[Dekan]

Was Ambrose uncannily foreseeing satellite delay?

[Acme]

Was Ambrose uncannily foreseeing satellite delay?

Ney. Hindsighting pandemonioum in his Devil's Dictionary.

Pandemonium ~ n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his pride of distinction.

source: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/echoes/2.html

 

My point of course is that contrary to your assertion, hearing one's own voice is not unprecedented in history because echoes predate voices. Completely natural and unrelated to technology. Moreover, your invoking evolution in the context you did is...well...applesauce. Can you hear me now?

[Dekan]

Damn, you got me about the echoes! I concede the point. But an echo in a cave is a mere transitory, once-only,recording. Multiple- echoes perhaps, but no permanent record. Not like a technological phonograph, which can be re-played. Stuff echoes, let's have CD's. I like Doris Day recordings, but not if she had to stand in a cave, permanently bouncing her lovely voice off the walls.

 

(I only invoked Evolution because I thought it was de riguer on a Science forum, and might get a + point)

[Acme]

Damn, you got me about the echoes! I concede the point. But an echo in a cave is a mere transitory, once-only,recording. Multiple- echoes perhaps, but no permanent record. Not like a technological phonograph, which can be re-played. Stuff echoes, let's have CD's. I like Doris Day recordings, but not if she had to stand in a cave, permanently bouncing her lovely voice off the walls.

 

(I only invoked Evolution because I thought it was de riguer on a Science forum, and might get a + point)

What is de rigueur de rigueur de rigueur is sound reasoning well applied. Echoes are not only phenomena of caves by the way. For example, mountains and canyons suffice. Hearing one's own voice from outside [the body] by an echo is just that and the fact is not lessened by any other means of hearing one's voice from outside. (Such as recordings.)

 

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it. ~ W. C. Fields

 

Edited February 26, 2014 by Acme