Although the vocal expression of emotion has received little attention in comparison with other modalities of human nonverbal communication, there is evidence from both encoding and decoding studies that there are a number of voice and speech cues which reliably characterize the vocal expression of particular emotional states (cf. review by Scherer, in press) and that human observers are able to infer the emotional state of a speaker with a fair degree of accuracy on the basis of such vocal cues (cf. Kramer, 1963;Davitz, 1964;Scherer, 1970). In Brunswikian terms, both the ecological validity of certain acoustic cues and the functional validity of observers' attributions of emotional states based on such cues (Brunswik, 1956) seem to be established.
Subjects tapped the perceived meter or beat of polyrhythms that consisted of two conflicting pulse trains (e.g., three elements/repetition vs. five elements/repetition). The meter interpretation was based on the global rhythmic properties of a polyrhythm as well as on the temporal properties of each pulse train. The rhythmic properties of a polyrhythm restricted the range of meter interpretations. Some polyrhythms were overdetermined and allowed but one meter, while others were more ambiguous and allowed several meters. For all polyrhythms, however, the temporal interval between elements of a pulse train determined whether that pulse train would serve as the background beat. These results demonstrate the value of a hierarchic analysis of rhythm. .
Subjects tapped the beat (i.e., meter) of a polyrhythm in which one tone occurred three times per pattern repitition while the second tone occurred four times per pattern repitition. At one presentation rate, the polyrhythm underwent a figure-ground reversal —the beat shifted from one tone to the other. Rhythmic organization is thus a function of the absolute tempo.
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