ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cognit.
Sec. Perception
This article is part of the Research TopicWomen in Perception 2024View all 4 articles
Gender Identity Impacts the Perception of Vocal Congruence
Provisionally accepted
- Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
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This study investigated vocal congruence, i.e., the alignment between self-voice perception and the sense of identity, across cisgender and transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) participants (n = 44) in three conditions: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, and Listening to recorded speech. Results revealed that TGNC participants reported significantly lower vocal congruence than cisgender participants across all experimental conditions, with the starkest difference in conditions where auditory feedback was present. This experience of incongruence appears to be modulated by interoceptive sensibility and alexithymia, with TGNC individuals reporting lower interoceptive trust and higher levels of alexithymia. Emotional awareness was positively linked to inner-voice congruence in the TGNC group. Additionally, aspects related to gender-minority stress predicted lower congruence. These findings highlight the complex interplay between gender identity, interoception, emotion regulation strategies, and voice perception.
Keywords: alexithymia, gender identity, inner speech, interoception, TGNC, vocal congruence
Received: 30 May 2025; Accepted: 02 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 De Livio, Mazzuca, Fini and Borghi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chiara De Livio
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