It’s the words you use and how you say them: electrophysiological correlates of the perception of imitated masculine speech

Gender characteristics of speech to do with prosody and linguistic style influence how a person is understood. We investigated electrophysiological correlates of these. Twenty-four people listened to sentences spoken by a female who manipulated her prosody by using a feminine and an imitated masculine voice and her linguistic style by using function words differentially associated with males and females. Event-related potentials unexpectedly showed a larger N400 elicited by imitated masculine compared to feminine prosody. A prosody by linguistic style interaction was also found in late positive components and a later window, where sentences congruent with speaker sex and gender (i.e. feminine prosody, linguistic style, and voice) were more negative going than sentences that were not. Further results showed less upper-alpha (∼10–13 Hz) event-related desynchronisation with imitated masculine compared to feminine prosody in a late time-window. These results suggest gender atypical speech affects early and reduces later semantic processing.