Are pitch variation cues indispensable to distinguish vocal emotions?

Wang, Ting; Yang, Qian

doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2018-66

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Some perception studies have suggested a universal association between high f 0 and positive emotion (e.g., happiness, Ortony et al, 1990;Ilie and Thompson, 2006;Belyk and Brown, 2014), but the same trend has not been observed in other corpus studies (Laukka et al, 2005;Goudbeek and Scherer, 2010). The f 0 acoustics of the same emotional tone can vary across studies in height and range (Pell et al, 2009), along with other cues such as intensity and duration (Wang and Lee, 2015;Wang and Qian, 2018). Furthermore, cross-linguistic and cultural differences have been reported in both the acoustic manifestation (Douglas-Cowie et al, 2003;Anolli et al, 2008; and the interpretation (Koeda et al, 2013) of f 0 .…”

Section: Emotionmentioning

confidence: 94%

How Tone, Intonation and Emotion Shape the Development of Infants’ Fundamental Frequency Perception

et al. 2022

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Fundamental frequency (ƒ0), perceived as pitch, is the first and arguably most salient auditory component humans are exposed to since the beginning of life. It carries multiple linguistic (e.g., word meaning) and paralinguistic (e.g., speakers’ emotion) functions in speech and communication. The mappings between these functions and ƒ0 features vary within a language and differ cross-linguistically. For instance, a rising pitch can be perceived as a question in English but a lexical tone in Mandarin. Such variations mean that infants must learn the specific mappings based on their respective linguistic and social environments. To date, canonical theoretical frameworks and most empirical studies do not view or consider the multi-functionality of ƒ0, but typically focus on individual functions. More importantly, despite the eventual mastery of ƒ0 in communication, it is unclear how infants learn to decompose and recognize these overlapping functions carried by ƒ0. In this paper, we review the symbioses and synergies of the lexical, intonational, and emotional functions that can be carried by ƒ0 and are being acquired throughout infancy. On the basis of our review, we put forward the Learnability Hypothesis that infants decompose and acquire multiple ƒ0 functions through native/environmental experiences. Under this hypothesis, we propose representative cases such as the synergy scenario, where infants use visual cues to disambiguate and decompose the different ƒ0 functions. Further, viable ways to test the scenarios derived from this hypothesis are suggested across auditory and visual modalities. Discovering how infants learn to master the diverse functions carried by ƒ0 can increase our understanding of linguistic systems, auditory processing and communication functions.

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Section: Emotionmentioning

confidence: 94%

How Tone, Intonation and Emotion Shape the Development of Infants’ Fundamental Frequency Perception

et al. 2022

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“…There is ample evidence that different emotions result in distinct acoustic characteristics [2,[5][6][7][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. Physiologically, the sympathetic nervous system is aroused by emotions such as anger, fear, or happiness, resulting in a higher heart rate and blood pressure, a dry mouth, and occasionally muscle tremors [55,56].…”

Section: How Emotions Affect Speech Acousticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A fearful voice shows a higher mean F0, a narrower, wider, or similar F0 range, a higher or lower mean amplitude, and a shorter duration [2, 5-7, 41-51, 54]. A happy voice has a higher mean F0, a wider or similar F0 range, a higher or equal mean amplitude, and a shorter or longer duration [2,[5][6][7][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. A sad voice has a lower or similar mean F0, a narrower or wider or similar F0 range, a lower mean amplitude, and a longer duration [2,[5][6][7][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54].…”

Section: How Emotions Affect Speech Acousticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional tones of voice affect the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones

et al. 2023

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Lexical tones and emotions are conveyed by a similar set of acoustic parameters; therefore, listeners of tonal languages face the challenge of processing lexical tones and emotions in the acoustic signal concurrently. This study examined how emotions affect the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones. In Experiment 1, Mandarin tones were produced by professional actors with angry, fear, happy, sad, and neutral tones of voice. Acoustic analyses on mean F0, F0 range, mean amplitude, and duration were conducted on syllables excised from a carrier phrase. The results showed that emotions affect Mandarin tone acoustics to different degrees depending on specific Mandarin tones and specific emotions. In Experiment 2, selected syllables from Experiment 1 were presented in isolation or in context. Listeners were asked to identify the Mandarin tones and emotions of the syllables. The results showed that emotions affect Mandarin tone identification to a greater extent than Mandarin tones affect emotion recognition. Both Mandarin tones and emotions were identified more accurately in syllables presented with the carrier phrase, but the carrier phrase affected Mandarin tone identification and emotion recognition to different degrees. These findings suggest that lexical tones and emotions interact in complex but systematic ways.

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“…Thus, vocal emotions such as happiness and fear and anger and fear can be clearly separated with respect to the degree of local pitch movements. Furthermore, these cues have been proved to be useful to examine whether pitch fluctuation is influenced by the existence of a lexical tone system within one language [25,26]. Consequently, we also include them in our across-language analysis to test whether the restriction exists.…”

Section: Acoustic and Physiological Patterns Of Each Vocal Emotion Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ross et al (1986) [24] found that the manipulation of f0 measures in emotional prosody was restricted in tonal languages, including Taiwanese, Mandarin and Thai, when compared to English as a non-tonal language. In References [25,26], prosodic cues of vocal emotions in Mandarin were analysed across different tone groups. The restriction of pitch variation was found in the sentences which were made up of all high-level tone syllables for vocal emotions because the pitch of a high level-tone must be quasi-static to maintain its tonal structure, indicating that the acoustic patterns of the same emotion could be different even within a language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Within and Across-Language Comparison of Vocal Emotions in Mandarin and English

Wang

Lee

2018

Applied Sciences

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This study reports experimental results on whether the acoustic realization of vocal emotions differs between Mandarin and English. Prosodic cues, spectral cues and articulatory cues generated by electroglottograph (EGG) of five emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness and neutral) were compared within and across Mandarin and English through a production experiment. Results of within-language comparison demonstrated that each vocal emotion had specific acoustic patterns in each language. Moreover, normalized data were used in the across-language comparison analysis. Results indicated that Mandarin and English showed different mechanisms of utilizing pitch for encoding emotions. The differences in pitch variation between neutral and other emotions were significantly larger in English than in Mandarin. However, the variations of speech rate and certain phonation cues (e.g., CPP (Cepstral Peak Prominence) and CQ (Contact quotient)) were significantly greater in Mandarin than in English. The differences in emotional speech between the two languages may be due to the restriction of pitch variation by the presence of lexical tones in Mandarin. This study reveals an interesting finding that occurs when a certain cue (e.g., pitch) is restricted in one language, other cues were strengthened to take on the responsibility of differentiating vocal emotions. Therefore, we posit that the acoustic realizations of emotional speech are multidimensional.

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Are pitch variation cues indispensable to distinguish vocal emotions?

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

How Tone, Intonation and Emotion Shape the Development of Infants’ Fundamental Frequency Perception

How Tone, Intonation and Emotion Shape the Development of Infants’ Fundamental Frequency Perception

Emotional tones of voice affect the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones

Within and Across-Language Comparison of Vocal Emotions in Mandarin and English

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