Dr Nadine Lavan
Lecturer in Biological Psychology
Co-lead for EDI
School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences
Queen Mary University of London
Queen Mary University of London
Research
voice perception, identity perception, person perception, first impressions, face perception, emotion perception
Interests
When hearing a voice, listeners do not only perceive what is being said, but they can also glean informationabout who is talking: Is the person familiar? Are they female or male? Do they sound trustworthy? Voice research to date has focussed on how listeners understand what is being said, leaving core questions unanswered about how we perceive information about other people from their voices. My research is addressing these questions by investigating how listeners perceive, learn, and represent voice identities and other person characteristics (e.g., gender, age, personality traits). To do this, I use methods from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as acoustic signal processing approaches.
Publications
Publications of specific relevance to the Centre for Brain and Behaviour2024
Smith HMJ, Ritchie KL, Baguley TS and Lavan N (2024). Face and voice identity matching accuracy is not improved by multimodal identity information. British Journal of Psychology, Wiley 17-12-2024
Lavan N and Sutherland C (2024). Idiosyncratic and shared contributions shape impressions from voices and faces. Cognition, Elsevier vol. 251 18-07-2024
Lavan N, Rinke P and Scharinger M (2024). The time course of person perception from voices in the brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences 18-06-2024
Cai CQ, Lavan N, Chen SHY, Wang CZX, Ozturk OC, Chiu RMY, Gilbert SJ, White SJ and Scott SK (2024). Mapping the differential impact of spontaneous and conversational laughter on brain and mind: an fMRI study in autism. Cerebral Cortex, Oxford University Press (OUP) vol. 34 (5) 02-05-2024
Lavan N (2024). Left-handed voices? Examining the perceptual learning of novel person characteristics from the voice. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, SAGE Publications vol. 77 (11), 2325-2338. 14-02-2024
Lavan N (2024). Studying person perception from voices: Creating common ground by looking beyond accuracy. The Cognitive Psychology Bulletin, British Psychological Society vol. 1 (9), 40-44. 30-01-2024
2023
Lally C, Lavan N, Garrido L, Tsantani M and McGettigan C (2023). Neural representations of naturalistic person identities while watching a feature film. Imaging Neuroscience, MIT Press vol. 1, 1-19. 21-08-2023
Guldner S, Lavan N, Lally C, Wittmann L, Nees F, Flor H and McGettigan C (2023). Human talkers change their voices to elicit specific trait percepts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Springer Nature vol. 31 (1), 209-222. 28-07-2023
Lavan N (2023). The Time Course of Person Perception From Voices: A Behavioral Study. Psychological Science, SAGE Publications vol. 34 (7), 771-783. 25-05-2023
Mileva M and Lavan N (2023). Trait impressions from voices are formed rapidly within 400 ms of exposure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, American Psychological Association 06-02-2023
Lavan N, Bamaniya NR, Muse M, Price RLM and Mareschal I (2023). The effects of the presence of a face and direct eye gaze on voice identity learning. British Journal of Psychology, Wiley vol. 114 (3), 537-549. 23-01-2023
Lavan N and McGettigan C (2023). A model for person perception from familiar and unfamiliar voices. Communications Psychology, Springer Nature vol. 1 (1) 01-01-2023
2022
Lavan N (2022). Trait impressions from voices: Considering multiple ‘origin stories’ and the dynamic nature of trait-related cues. British Journal of Psychology, Wiley 05-12-2022
Lavan N (2022). How do we describe other people from voices and faces? Cognition, Elsevier vol. 230 07-10-2022
Brekelmans G, Lavan N, Saito H, Clayards M and Wonnacott E (2022). Does high variability training improve the learning of non-native phoneme contrasts over low variability training? A replication. Journal of Memory and Language, Elsevier 16-07-2022
Lavan N, Chan WY, Zhuang Y, Mareschal I and Shergill SS (2022). Direct eye gaze enhances the ventriloquism effect. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, Springer Nature vol. 84 (7), 2293-2302. 31-03-2022
Njie S, Lavan N and McGettigan C (2022). Talker and accent familiarity yield advantages for voice identity perception: A voice sorting study. Memory and Cognition, Psychonomic Society 10-03-2022
Lavan N (2022). The effect of familiarity on within-person age judgements from voices. BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY vol. 113 (1), 287-299. 01-01-2022
2021
Leongómez JD, Pisanski K, Reby D, Sauter D, Lavan N, Perlman M and Varella Valentova J (2021). Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Royal Society, The vol. 376 (1840), 20200386-20200386. 20-12-2021
Waters S, Kanber E, Lavan N, Belyk M, Carey D, Cartei V, Lally C, Miquel M and McGettigan C (2021). Singers show enhanced performance and neural representation of vocal imitation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Royal Society, The vol. 376 (1840), 20200399-20200399. 20-12-2021
Eerola T, Armitage J, Lavan N and Knight S (2021). Online Data Collection in Auditory Perception and Cognition Research: Recruitment, Testing, Data Quality and Ethical Considerations. Auditory Perception & Cognition, Informa UK Limited, 1-30. 01-12-2021
Lavan N, Collins MRN and Miah JFM (2021). Audiovisual identity perception from naturally‐varying stimuli is driven by visual information. British Journal of Psychology, Wiley vol. 113 (1), 248-263. 06-09-2021
Lavan N, Kreitewolf J, Obleser J and McGettigan C (2021). Familiarity and task context shape the use of acoustic information in voice identity perception. Cognition, Elsevier 20-07-2021
Lavan N, Smith HMJ and McGettigan C (2021). Unimodal and cross-modal identity judgements using an audio-visual sorting task: Evidence for independent processing of faces and voices. Memory & Cognition, Springer Nature vol. 50 (1), 216-231. 12-07-2021
Lavan N, Smith H, Jiang L and McGettigan C (2021). Explaining face-voice matching decisions: The contribution of mouth movements, stimulus effects and response biases. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, Springer Nature vol. 83 (5), 2205-2216. 01-04-2021
Knight S, Lavan N, Torre I and McGettigan C (2021). The influence of perceived vocal traits on trusting behaviours in an economic game. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, SAGE Publications, 17470218211010144-17470218211010144. 30-03-2021
Lavan N, Mileva M, Burton AM, Young AW and McGettigan C (2021). Trait evaluations of faces and voices: Comparing within- and between-person variability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, American Psychological Association 18-03-2021
Kanber E, Lavan N and McGettigan C (2021). Highly Accurate and Robust Identity Perception From Personally Familiar Voices. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, American Psychological Association 01-01-2021
2020
Payne B, Lavan N, Knight S and McGettigan C (2020). Perceptual prioritization of self‐associated voices. British Journal of Psychology, Wiley vol. 112 (3), 585-610. 17-10-2020
Johnson J, McGettigan C and Lavan N (2020). Comparing unfamiliar voice and face identity perception using identity sorting tasks. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, SAGE Publications vol. 73 (10), 1537-1545. 01-10-2020
Lavan N, Mileva M and McGettigan C (2020). How does familiarity with a voice affect trait judgements? British Journal of Psychology, Wiley 23-05-2020
2019
Waters S, Kanber E, Lavan N, Carey D, Cartei V, Lally C, Miquel M and McGettigan C (2019). Neural representations of enhanced speech motor control in trained singers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America vol. 146 (4), 2790-2790. 01-10-2019
Lavan N, Burston LFK and Garrido L (2019). How many voices did you hear? Natural variability disrupts identity perception from unfamiliar voices. Br J Psychol vol. 110 (3), 576-593. 01-08-2019
Lavan N, Merriman SE, Ladwa P, Burston LFK, Knight S and McGettigan C (2019). 'Please sort these voice recordings into 2 identities': Effects of task instructions on performance in voice sorting studies. British Journal of Psychology, Wiley vol. 111 (3), 556-569. 22-07-2019
Lavan N, Knight S, Hazan V and McGettigan C (2019). The effects of high variability training on voice identity learning. Cognition, Elsevier vol. 193 16-07-2019
Lavan N, Knight S and McGettigan C (2019). Listeners form average-based representations of individual voice identities. Nature Communications, Springer Nature vol. 10 (1) 03-06-2019
Lavan N, Burston LF, Ladwa P, Merriman SE, Knight S and McGettigan C (2019). Breaking voice identity perception: Expressive voices are more confusable for listeners. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, SAGE Publications vol. 72 (9), 2240-2248. 21-03-2019
2018
Lavan N, Domone A, Fisher B, Kenigzstein N, Scott SK and McGettigan C (2018). Speaker Sex Perception from Spontaneous and Volitional Nonverbal Vocalizations. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Springer (part of Springer Nature) vol. 43 (1), 1-22. 20-10-2018
Lavan N, Burton AM, Scott SK and McGettigan C (2018). Flexible voices: Identity perception from variable vocal signals. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Springer Nature vol. 26 (1), 90-102. 25-06-2018
Knight S, Lavan N, Kanber E and McGettigan C (2018). The social code of speech prosody must be specific and generalizable. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol. 115 (27), e6103-e6103. 13-06-2018
Lavan N, Short B, Wilding A and McGettigan C (2018). Impoverished encoding of speaker identity in spontaneous laughter. Evolution and Human Behavior vol. 39 (1), 139-145. 01-01-2018
2017
Lavan N and McGettigan C (2017). Increased discriminability of authenticity from multimodal laughter is driven by auditory information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, SAGE Publications vol. 70 (10), 2159-2168. 01-10-2017
Kuhn LK, Wydell T, Lavan N, McGettigan C and Garrido L (2017). Similar representations of emotions across faces and voices. Emotion vol. 17 (6), 912-937. 01-09-2017
Lavan N (2017). Commentary: Hearing faces and seeing voices: Amodal coding of person identity in the human brain. Frontiers in Neuroscience, Frontiers Media vol. 11, 303-303. 30-05-2017
2016
Lavan N, Rankin G, Lorking N, Scott S and McGettigan C (2016). Neural correlates of the affective properties of spontaneous and volitional laughter types. Neuropsychologia, Elsevier vol. 95, 30-39. 09-12-2016
Lavan N, Scott SK and McGettigan C (2016). Impaired generalization of speaker identity in the perception of familiar and unfamiliar voices. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, American Psychological Association vol. 145 (12), 1604-1614. 01-12-2016
Meekings S, Evans S, Lavan N, Boebinger D, Krieger-Redwood K, Cooke M and Scott SK (2016). Distinct neural systems recruited when speech production is modulated by different masking sounds. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, AIP Publishing LLC vol. 140 (1), 8-8. 05-07-2016
Jasmin KM, McGettigan C, Agnew ZK, Lavan N, Josephs O, Cummins F and Scott SK (2016). Cohesion and Joint Speech: Right Hemisphere Contributions to Synchronized Vocal Production. Journal of Neuroscience, Society for Neuroscience vol. 36 (17), 4669-4680. 27-04-2016
2015
Lavan N, Scott SK and McGettigan C (2015). Laugh Like You Mean It: Authenticity Modulates Acoustic, Physiological and Perceptual Properties of Laughter. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Springer Nature vol. 40 (2), 133-149. 19-12-2015
Lima CF, Lavan N, Evans S, Agnew Z, Halpern AR, Shanmugalingam P, Meekings S, Boebinger D, Ostarek M, McGettigan C, Warren JE and Scott SK (2015). Feel the Noise: Relating Individual Differences in Auditory Imagery to the Structure and Function of Sensorimotor Systems. Cerebral Cortex, Oxford University Press (OUP) vol. 25 (11), 4638-4650. 19-06-2015
2014
Scott SK, Lavan N, Chen S and McGettigan C (2014). The social life of laughter. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Elsevier vol. 18 (12), 618-620. 22-10-2014
Lavan N and Lima CF (2014). Neurocognitive Mechanisms for Vocal Emotions: Sounds, Meaning, Action. Journal of Neuroscience, Society for Neuroscience vol. 34 (39), 12950-12952. 24-09-2014
Lavan N, Lima CF, Harvey H, Scott SK and McGettigan C (2014). I thought that I heard you laughing: Contextual facial expressions modulate the perception of authentic laughter and crying. Cognition & Emotion, Taylor & Francis vol. 29 (5), 935-944. 22-09-2014
Grants
Grants of specific relevance to the Centre for Brain and BehaviourVoCs - MSCA Doctoral Network (2023) LevanNadine Lavan
£267,922 EPSRC - EU Scheme (01-12-2024 - 30-11-2028)
Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, ‘Perceiving people from voices’ - Nadine LavanNadine Lavan
£308,606 Wellcome Trust (01-09-2020 - 30-11-2024)