Visual prosody of newsreaders: Effects of information structure, emotional content and intended audience on facial expressions

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis article investigates whether newsreaders exploit their expressive style for signalling different types of communicatively relevant information. The study reported upon here investigates whether these speakers use their facial expressions to ''package'' the content of their messages so that they reflect the relative importance, the emotional connotation and the intended audience of the news items. To this end, Dutch newsreaders (addressing audiences consisting of either adults or children) were analysed in terms of their facial expressions. The first study explores whether eyebrow movements and head nods of newsreaders (only adult news) are correlated with the relative prominence of words in their messages. Consistent with findings in the literature for other styles of speech, it was found that pitchaccented words in the newsreader data tended to be marked by variations in eyebrow movements and head nods. The second study aimed to find out whether newsreaders adapt their facial expressions to the seriousness of the topic they are talking about, and, if so, whether this adaptation differs for newsreaders addressing adults or children. Analyses reveal that both the topic and the intended audience had an effect of the newsreaders' expressions, especially as the positive topics and the childdirected news items tended to be more expressive. The relevance of the findings of studies 1 and 2 for speech production and recognition is discussed.

The timing of head movements: The role of prosodic heads and edges

“…Yet, all utterances included a phrase-final target word in broad focus position, and almost one fourth of the phrase-final target words were accompanied by a head gesture (head nod, head tilt, or upward movement). Despite the inter-individual variability in gestures production (also observed in Graf et al, 2002;Ishi et al, 2014;Swerts and Krahmer, 2010), the ratio of head gesture per utterance is similar to what previous studies have found when examining spontaneous interactions (Alexanderson et al, 2013;Ferre, 2014) and indicates that the procedure was useful for the purposes of our study. Spontaneous data are valuable because they reveal the patterns of real-world interactions, but at the same time they complicate the examination of whether this variability is the result of different speaking styles or maybe of different pragmatic functions served by the head gesture (see experiment 2, and also the end of this section for a discussion of this issue).…”

The influence of infant-directed speech on 12-month-olds’ intersensory perception of fluent speech

“…From birth on infants prefer to listen to ID speech (Cooper & Aslin, 1990;Fernald, 1985;McRoberts, McDonough, & Lakusta, 2009;Werker, Pegg, & Mcleod, 1994) suggesting that ID speech effectively elicits and holds infants' attention. Likewise, the facial movements made during ID speech differ from AD speech (Chong, Werker, Russell, & Carroll, 2003;Shepard, Spence, & Sasson, 2012) and display characteristics such as exaggerated lip movement (Green, Nip, Wilson, Mefferd, & Yunusova, 2010), exaggerated smiles, raised eyebrows, and wide eyes (Swerts & Krahmer, 2010;Werker & Mcleod, 1989) which are highly salient to infants. These dynamic visual properties that accompany the acoustic ID speech message may further capture infants' attention and may not only facilitate infants' language acquisition (Golinkoff & Alioto, 1995;Graf Estes & Hurley, 2013;Ma, Golinkoff, Houston, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2011;Singh, Nestor, Parikh, & Yull, 2009;Zangl & Mills, 2007) but may also contribute, in particular, to infants' processing of intersensory speech.…”

Distinct Facial Characteristics Differentiate Communicative Intent of Infant‐Directed Speech

“…A significant property of speech that has been understudied is the visual component of ID speech or the facial movements and expressions that accompany the acoustic signal (Chong, Werker, Russell & Carroll, ). Speakers often use facial expressions to further communicate their intended message, and adults may be more visually expressive when addressing children versus adults (Swerts & Krahmer, ). A good listener is able to incorporate facial cues with the auditory signal to interpret the intent of the message, and failure to do so is often considered detrimental to the social interaction, as seen in certain social disorders (e.g.…”