A technique for notifying a person who is engaged in a telephone call with a second person that a third person is calling him or her is disclosed. The notification comprises not a series of beeps but a voice - synthetically generated or pre-recorded - that has at least one different psychoacoustic characteristic than the voice of the second person. By using a notification that is psychoacoustically different than the voice of the second person, the ability of the first person to simultaneously perceive and understand the notification and the voice of the second person is enhanced. Example psychoacoustic characteristics of a voice include, but are not limited to, the gender of the speaker's voice (i.e., male or female), the natural language of the speaker's voice (e.g., English, Spanish, French, etc.), and the smoothness of the speaker's voice (e.g., silky or raspy, etc.). <IMAGE>
Call waiting notification