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Abstract
Auditory imagery experiences (AIEs) occur when readers simulate character voices while
reading. This project assessed how familiarity with voice and narrative contexts influences
activation of AIEs. Participants listened to dialogs between two characters. Participants
then read scripts with the characters, half that had been previously listened to and
half that were new. During reading, participants were interrupted with an auditory
recognition task, with probes presented in voices that either matched or mismatched
the character associated with the current line of dialog. Faster responses to matching
than mismatching voices were consistently obtained for familiar scripts, providing
evidence for AIEs. Transfer to unfamiliar scripts only occurred after extended experience
with character voices. These findings define factors that influence activation of
speaker voice during reading, with implications for understanding the nature of linguistic
representations across presentation modalities.