Abstract
<p>Listeners extract a wealth of social information about speakers (e.g., identity, emotions, trait impressions) based on the sound of their voices, but abilities to perceive non-linguistic voice-based social signals have been studied almost exclusively with objective performance measures. By contrast, no standardised tools currently exist to assess voice metacognitions – subjective, self-rated skills that already gained importance in the face domain. Here we report the Voice Cognition Ability Scales (VOCAS) – the first self-rating tool of its kind. We initially compiled 78 items that cover various aspects (identity/memory, perceptions of gender, age, regional origin, emotions, physical state/health, social impressions, personality, voice sensitivity, imagery, and naturalness) and collected online rating data from English (N=115), German (N=115), and Turkish (N=114) samples. Via principal component analysis, we reduced these to a final version with 14-items, belonging to two subscales we label socio-emotional voice cognition (emo), and voice identity cognition (ID). Results were remarkably comparable between samples, suggesting suitability across cultural contexts, and were replicated with the final German version (N=129). The VOCAS are an efficient standardized self-report tool, applicable in less than 5 minutes, that can make future cross-study comparisons of voice research data more feasible. We expect that (1) future research into various aspects of vocal communication will benefit from the VOCAS across a large range of social signals as targeted in individual studies, and (2) the collection of self-report data will become an important component of individual assessments of voice skills, whether in the socio-emotional or in the identification domain of voice communication.</p>