Gender-diverse experiences at the interface between exteroception and interoception: An investigation on voice perception.

Gender - diverse individuals face everyday discrimination and misgendering. Voice is one of the most stereotyped aspects of gender - diverse identities, and it represents a bridge between internal experiences and socialization. However, the impact of nteroceptive representation of language (i.e., voice self - perception) and its relation with gender remains still underexplored. We investigated this asking gender - diverse and cisgender participants to read gender - stereotyped and neutral texts in three dif ferent co nditions (inner reading, loud reading, and listening to their recorded voice) and to complete a vocal congruence task. Also, we ask them to rate gendered and non - gendered words on five semantic dimensions. Preliminary results show that gender - diverse parti cipants perceive less vocal congruence in all conditions. They also rate gender - related words as more emotional and related to the body and social aspects than cisgender participants. This evidence is two - folded: it highlights the role of stereotypes on ge nder - diverse identities in the perception of congruence between internal and external bodily cues. Moreover, it confirms the importance of emotional, bodily, and social aspects related to gender for conceptual representation.