Saying it with a natural child's voice! When affective auditory manipulations increase working memory in aging

Objectives: Working memory functions and their relations with affective auditory factors, have not been extensively investigated in aging yet. Method: In this study, younger and older participants completed a classical working memory test (a running working memory task) pronounced by three different voices. In particular, in Experiment 1 the natural voices of a 3-year-old child, a 26-year-old young adult and an 86-year-old older adult were used for task presentation. In Experiment 2 stimuli were morphed in order to better control for sound properties across the three voices. Results: Results showed that working memory increased for older adults compared to younger adults when the task was presented with natural voices and especially so when the task was presented in a child's voice. However, the child-voice effect disappeared with morphed voices. Conclusion: Data confirm the importance of studying the relationship between auditory features and emotional variations as a possible practical means of reducing typical age-related working memory deficits.