Vocal Attractiveness Increases by Averaging

Bruckert, Laetitia; Bestelmeyer, Patricia E. G.; Latinus, Marianne; Rouger, Julien; Charest, Ian; Rousselet, Guillaume A.; Kawahara, Hideki; Belin, Pascal

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.034

Cited by 139 publications

(164 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Amusic deficits in prosody perception remain controversial (30,37), but our results suggest other domains where amusics and normal listeners may differ. Voice attractiveness, for instance, is positively correlated with the degree of harmonicity (52). Harmonicity is also an important cue for concurrent sound segregation (53).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The basis of musical consonance as revealed by congenital amusia

Cousineau

McDermott

Peretz

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

110

164

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Some combinations of musical notes sound pleasing and are termed "consonant," but others sound unpleasant and are termed "dissonant." The distinction between consonance and dissonance plays a central role in Western music, and its origins have posed one of the oldest and most debated problems in perception. In modern times, dissonance has been widely believed to be the product of "beating": interference between frequency components in the cochlea that has been believed to be more pronounced in dissonant than consonant sounds. However, harmonic frequency relations, a higher-order sound attribute closely related to pitch perception, has also been proposed to account for consonance. To tease apart theories of musical consonance, we tested sound preferences in individuals with congenital amusia, a neurogenetic disorder characterized by abnormal pitch perception. We assessed amusics' preferences for musical chords as well as for the isolated acoustic properties of beating and harmonicity. In contrast to control subjects, amusic listeners showed no preference for consonance, rating the pleasantness of consonant chords no higher than that of dissonant chords. Amusics also failed to exhibit the normally observed preference for harmonic over inharmonic tones, nor could they discriminate such tones from each other. Despite these abnormalities, amusics exhibited normal preferences and discrimination for stimuli with and without beating. This dissociation indicates that, contrary to classic theories, beating is unlikely to underlie consonance. Our results instead suggest the need to integrate harmonicity as a foundation of music preferences, and illustrate how amusia may be used to investigate normal auditory function. music perception | aesthetic preferences | roughness

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The basis of musical consonance as revealed by congenital amusia

Cousineau

McDermott

Peretz

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

110

164

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Many studies do not mention the range of their sample durations, and the studies that mention them reveal substantial variations between experiments. For example, the vowel duration was 250 -380 ms (mean 0 290 ms) in Collins and Missing (2003), 640 ms on average in Feinberg, Jones, Little, et al (2005), and 201 -477 ms in Bruckert et al (2010). Studies using sentences also sometimes have mentioned the average duration, but only for information purposes (e.g., Lander, 2008;Puts, Apicella, & Cárdenas, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still others use monophthong vowel sounds (e.g., /a/ and /i/ in English). These stimuli are most common in studies on voice preference (Bruckert et al, 2010;Collins, 2000;Feinberg, Jones, DeBruine, et al, 2005;Ferdenzi, Lemaître, Leongómez, & Roberts, 2011). The use of vowels is beneficial in two regards.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voice attractiveness: Influence of stimulus duration and type

et al. 2012

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Voice attractiveness is a relatively new area of research. Some aspects of the methodology used in this domain deserve particular attention. Especially, the duration of voice samples is often neglected as a factor and happens to be manipulated without the perceptual consequences of these manipulations being known. Moreover, the type of voice stimulus varies from a single vowel to complex sentences. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the extent to which stimulus duration (nonmanipulated vs. normalized) and type (vowel vs. word) influence perceived voice attractiveness. Twenty-seven male and female raters made attractiveness judgments of 30 male and female voice samples. Voice samples included a single vowel /a/, a three-vowel series /i a o/, and the French word "bonjour" (i.e., "hello"). These samples were presented in three conditions: nonmanipulated, shortened, and lengthened duration. Duration manipulation was performed using the pitch synchronous overlap and add (PSOLA) algorithm implemented in Praat. Results for the effect of stimulus type showed that word length samples were more attractive to the opposite sex than vowels. Results for the effect of duration showed that the nonmanipulated sound sample duration was not predictive of perceived attractiveness. Duration manipulation, on the other hand, altered perceived attractiveness for the lengthening condition. In particular, there was a linear decrease in attractiveness as a function of modification percentage (especially for the word, as compared with the vowels). Recommendations for voice sample normalization with the PSOLA algorithm are thus to prefer shortening over lengthening and, if not possible, to limit the extent of duration manipulation-for example, by normalizing to the mean sample duration.

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“…La question de l'esthétique de la voix parlée suscite un intérêt grandissant dans la communauté des chercheurs en parole et des professionnels de la voix -phoniatres et orthophonistes -impliqués dans les processus de rééducation vocale (Bruckert et al, 2010, Liu & Wu, 2011. Ceci s'explique, entre autres, par le fait que la voix est un outil de communication et d'interactions sociales qui influe fortement sur l'image qu'un individu peut avoir de son interlocuteur.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified