Acoustic correlates of female confidence: A production and comprehension study

Abstract

In the current study, an interactive approach is used to explore possible contributors to the misattributions listeners make about female talker expression of confidence. To do this, the expression and identification of confidence was evaluated through the evaluation of talker- (e.g., talker knowledge and affective acoustic modulation) and listener-specific factors (e.g., interaction between talker acoustic cues and listener knowledge). Talker and listener contexts were manipulated by implementing a social constraint for talkers and withholding information from listeners. Results indicated that listeners were sensitive to acoustic information produced by the female talkers in this study. However, when world knowledge and acoustics competed, judgments of talker confidence by listeners were less accurate. In fact, acoustic cues to female talker confidence were more accurately used by listeners as a cue to perceived confidence when relevant world knowledge was missing. By targeting speech dynamics between female talkers and both female and male listeners, the current study provides a better understanding of how confidence is realized acoustically and, perhaps more importantly, how those cues may be interpreted/misinterpreted by listeners.

The Role of Prosody in Disambiguating English Indirect Requests

“…We also included measures of dispersion for both pitch (standard deviation of F0) and intensity (standard deviation of intensity). Finally, because the non-request interpretation of the conventional utterances (e.g., “Can you open that window?”) was a yes–no question about the hearer’s ability, and because yes–no questions in English typically have a low-rise pitch contour (Banuazizi & Creswell, 1999; Hedberg et al, 2014; also see the study by Geluykens, 1988), we used the slope of the F0 component (slope of regressing F0 ~ time) as a proxy for the degree to which an utterance exhibited a rising or falling contour (Roche et al, 2019). All measures were taken across the entire sentence; we did not analyze word-level acoustic features (e.g., focal stress) in the current work (see the “Limitations and future work” section for a discussion of this avenue).…”

Prosody and speech act interpretation: The case of French indirect requests

“…We also included measures of dispersion for both pitch (standard deviation of f 0 ) and intensity (standard deviation of intensity). 5 Finally, because the non-request interpretation of our modal interrogatives is a yes-no question about the addressee's ability, and because prototypical French questions have a low-rise pitch contour (e.g., Di Cristo 2016), we used the slope of the f 0 component (slope of regressing f 0 against time) to measure the degree to which an utterance exhibits a rising or falling contour (Roche et al 2019;Trott et al 2019).…”

Gender stereotypes and social perception of vocal confidence is mitigated by salience of socio-indexical cues to gender

“…Heuristics can vary the strength that is needed to trigger when expectancies vary (e.g., weak cues are needed for strong expectancies; Bruner, 1957 ; Bohner et al, 1995 , p. 37). In the single-talker condition, the rising intonation cue, which has been shown to be predominantly a woman-typed cue (Roche et al, 2019 , 2022 ), may have been strong enough to trigger a stereotype because of the strong expectation that women are prescriptively agreeable and less confident than men (Prentice and Carranza, 2002 ).…”

“…Additionally, listeners were presented with the yeah and no files manipulated by the intonational contour (flat intonation, rising intonation, and declining intonation). Based on results from other studies, it was assumed that sound files with rising intonation would be perceived as less confident, while sound files with declining intonation would be perceived as more confident (Jiang and Pell, 2015 ; Roche et al, 2019 , 2022 ). We had no a priori assumptions about the natural/flat productions and included them mainly to increase the number of trials so that listeners would not guess the purpose of the task (i.e., consistent with the matched guise technique, Ball and Giles, 1982 ), and these trials acted as fillers.…”

“…Warren and Britain ( 2000 ) suggested that rising intonation may also be used as a way to back-channel or a way to check in with a communication partner to assess understanding. We may also use rising intonation to communicate uncertainty (Ward and Hirschberg, 1985 ) and/or a lack of confidence (Roche et al, 2019 , 2022 ). Roche et al ( 2022 ) found that both women and men produce rising intonation to convey a lack of confidence and declining intonation to convey increased confidence.…”