Voice Stress Analysis: A New Framework for Voice and Effort in Human Performance

Abstract

People rely on speech for communication, both in a personal and professional context, and often under different conditions of physical, cognitive and/or emotional load. Since vocalization is entirely integrated within both our central (CNS) and autonomic nervous system (ANS), a mounting number of studies have examined the relationship between voice output and the impact of stress. In the current paper, we will outline the different stages of voice output, i.e., breathing, phonation and resonance in relation to a neurovisceral integrated perspective on stress and human performance. In reviewing the function of these three stages of voice output, we will give an overview of the voice parameters encountered in studies on voice stress analysis (VSA) and review the impact of the different types of physiological, cognitive and/or emotional load. In the section “Discussion,” with regard to physical load, a competition for ventilation processes required to speak and those to meet metabolic demand of exercised muscles is described. With regard to cognitive and emotional load, we will present the “Model for Voice and Effort” (MoVE) that comprises the integration of ongoing top-down and bottom-up activity under different types of load and combined patterns of voice output. In the MoVE, it is proposed that the fundamental frequency (F0) values as well as jitter give insight in bottom-up/arousal activity and the effort a subject is capable to generate but that its range and variance are related to ongoing top-down processes and the amount of control a subject can maintain. Within the MoVE, a key-role is given to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) which is known to be involved in both the equilibration between bottom-up arousal and top-down regulation and vocal activity. Moreover, the connectivity between the ACC and the nervus vagus (NV) is underlined as an indication of the importance of respiration. Since respiration is the driving force of both stress and voice production, it is hypothesized to be the missing-link in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the dynamic between speech and stress.

Vocal markers of preoperative anxiety: a pilot study

“…Consistent with the literature, this relative F0 increase in stressed patients compared to less anxious patients may be due to sustained sympathetic nervous system activation 3 balancing the short term vocal fatigue observed over the course of normal conversations. 4 Contrary to other reports studying anxiety in different stressful contexts, including cognitive workload, social stress, stage fright, and during life-threatening emergencies, 5,6 we found no effect of pre-operative anxiety on voice quality features such as jitter, shimmer or nhr. Reasons for this discrepancy may include low statistical power, linguistic characteristics of the conversations (short utterances in a question-answer mode), top-down control exerted by the patients in front of medical professionals, or lower emotional load due to distant time to surgery.…”

Tell me more! Assessing interactions with social robots from speech

“…heart rate, skin conductance, and respiratory rate) measures often used in HRI research are prone to variety of challenges for participants as well as experimenters, such as discomfort, disruptions, and low temporal resolution [97]. Here we attempted to address how voice signals can be used as natural behavioural and performance measures in empirical research, and also as physiological measures [49][50][51][52]. Furthermore, as was demonstrated in this study, lexical and content features can be extracted from audio data to provide meaningful insights regarding a disclosure's volume and essence [37,43,44].…”

“…ref. [47,[49][50][51][52]). Single dimensions cannot capture the complex nature of self-disclosure, as it is a multidimensional behaviour [37]; perceptions of self-disclosure can be objectively observed differently from behaviour and content [53].…”

Voice perturbations under the stress overload in young individuals: phenotyping and suboptimal health as predictors for cascading pathologies

“…Verbal communication is one of the most sophisticated human motor skills. Hundreds of muscles, innervated by a different network of the cranial and spinal nerve, subcortical, and cortical parts of the brain are involved in the production and processing of voice [ 1 ]. Contextually, the human voice is a complex phenomenon reflecting both—the mental and physical health of an individual [ 2 ].…”