Vocal Pitch During Simulated Emotion

Alter

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

et al. 2009

Although listeners are able to decode the underlying emotions embedded in acoustical laughter sounds, little is known about the acoustical cues that differentiate between the emotions. This study investigated the acoustical correlates of laughter expressing four different emotions: joy, tickling, taunting, and schadenfreude. Analysis of 43 acoustic parameters showed that the four emotions could be accurately discriminated on the basis of a small parameter set. Vowel quality contributed only minimally to emotional differentiation whereas prosodic parameters were more effective. Emotions are expressed by similar prosodic parameters in both laughter and speech.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic profiles of distinct emotional expressions in laughter

Alter

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

et al. 2009

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

“…Listeners can reliably recognize a broad range of vocally expressed emotions, even when the spoken words are unrelated to the emotion (Fairbanks and Pronovost, 1938;Belin et al, 2008;SimonThomas et al, 2009) or when recordings are filtered to remove segmental content (Lieberman and Michaels, 1962). Unlike the words that make up the segmental aspect of speech, affective vocalizations can be recognized across languages (Laukka et al, 2013), between cultures that have had only minimal historical contact (Sauter et al, 2010)-although with some cultural variation (Scherer and Wallbott, 1994)-and across species (Faragó et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitch underlies activation of the vocal system during affective vocalization

Belyk

Brown

2015

Affective prosody is that aspect of speech that conveys a speaker's emotional state through modulations in various vocal parameters, most prominently pitch. While a large body of research implicates the cingulate vocalization area in controlling affective vocalizations in monkeys, no systematic test of functional homology for this area has yet been reported in humans. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activations when subjects produced affective vocalizations in the form of exclamations vs non-affective vocalizations with similar pitch contours. We also examined the perception of affective vocalizations by having participants make judgments about either the emotions being conveyed by recorded affective vocalizations or the pitch contours of the same vocalizations. Production of affective vocalizations and matched pitch contours activated a highly overlapping set of brain areas, including the larynx-phonation area of the primary motor cortex and a region of the anterior cingulate cortex that is consistent with the macro-anatomical position of the cingulate vocalization area. This overlap contradicts the dominant view that these areas form two distinct vocal pathways with dissociable functions. Instead, we propose that these brain areas are nodes in a single vocal network, with an emphasis on pitch modulation as a vehicle for affective expression.

“…Based on previous research on vocal emotion recognition and its relation to vocal pitch (e.g. Fairbanks and Pronovost 1938 ; Gold et al 2012 ; Quam and Swingley 2012 ; Scherer et al 1991 ) we expected that in people with typical development, performance in vocal emotion recognition and pitch discrimination would be correlated positively, i.e. better performance in vocal emotion recognition would be associated with better performance in vocal pitch discrimination.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the emotional information conveyed in a speaker’s voice) in humans relies on the analysis of specific acoustic features of the voice, such as the fundamental frequency (F0; i.e. the lowest frequency within the speech signal) or sound intensity (Fairbanks and Pronovost 1938 ; Gold et al 2012 ; Quam and Swingley 2012 ). The fundamental frequency is perceived as vocal pitch (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relation Between Vocal Pitch and Vocal Emotion Recognition Abilities in People with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development

Schelinski

Kriegstein

2018

J Autism Dev Disord

We tested the relation between vocal emotion and vocal pitch perception abilities in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and pairwise matched adults with typical development. The ASD group had impaired vocal but typical non-vocal pitch and vocal timbre perception abilities. The ASD group showed less accurate vocal emotion perception than the comparison group and vocal emotion perception abilities were correlated with traits and symptoms associated with ASD. Vocal pitch and vocal emotion perception abilities were significantly correlated in the comparison group only. Our results suggest that vocal emotion recognition difficulties in ASD might not only be based on difficulties with complex social tasks, but also on difficulties with processing of basic sensory features, such as vocal pitch.