Automaticity in the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations.

Abstract

The ability to perceive the emotions of others is crucial for everyday social interactions. Important aspects of visual socioemotional processing, such as the recognition of facial expressions, are known to depend on largely automatic mechanisms. However, whether and how properties of automaticity extend to the auditory domain remains poorly understood. Here we ask if nonverbal auditory emotion recognition is a controlled deliberate or an automatic efficient process, using vocalizations such as laughter, crying, and screams. In a between-subjects design (N = 112), and covering eight emotions (four positive), we determined whether emotion recognition accuracy (a) is improved when participants actively deliberate about their responses (compared with when they respond as fast as possible) and (b) is impaired when they respond under low and high levels of cognitive load (concurrent task involving memorizing sequences of six or eight digits, respectively). Response latencies were also measured. Mixed-effects models revealed that recognition accuracy was high across emotions, and only minimally affected by deliberation and cognitive load; the benefits of deliberation and costs of cognitive load were significant mostly for positive emotions, notably amusement/laughter, and smaller or absent for negative ones; response latencies did not suffer under low or high cognitive load; and high recognition accuracy (approximately 90%) could be reached within 500 ms after the stimulus onset, with performance exceeding chance-level already between 300 and 360 ms. These findings indicate that key features of automaticity, namely fast and efficient/effortless processing, might be a modality-independent component of emotion recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record

Reading characters in voices: Ratings of personality characteristics from voices predict proneness to auditory verbal hallucinations

“…Research shows that, in the general population, there seems to be a consistency in recognising emotions communicated through voices [49, 50]. The research on voice perception also highlights an automatic aspect of voice perception where decisions about voices are processed in milliseconds [4]. Although the present study did not apply any measures to indicate rapid cortical processing of voices, the results show that minimal exposure to a person’s voice (average 670ms) can suggest individual differences in how voices were rated, which might be associated with important traits, such as hallucination-proneness.…”

“…These automatic recognition processes are not reserved for the visual modality: listening to another person’s voice can be equally informative when making judgements about other people. Recent findings show that emotions are accurately recognised from nonverbal vocal cues, and the recognition can occur automatically between 300–360ms after exposure to a voice [4]. However, the time in which emotions are recognised from voices can vary–recognition of emotions might be different depending on the emotion type [5].…”

“…Similarly, discrimination between human and non-human sounds relates to differences in auditory cortical activation, where human speech triggers stronger responses than computer-generated tonal stimuli [15]. Efficiency in vocal emotion recognition also appears to be an automatic and accurate process, occurring between 300–500ms after exposure to a voice [4]. The processes associated with vocal emotion recognition were found to be accurate and uncompromised even under demanding distraction conditions [4].…”

“…Efficiency in vocal emotion recognition also appears to be an automatic and accurate process, occurring between 300–500ms after exposure to a voice [4]. The processes associated with vocal emotion recognition were found to be accurate and uncompromised even under demanding distraction conditions [4].…”

Where Sounds Occur Matters: Context Effects Influence Processing of Salient Vocalisations

“…Classical theories of emotions are founded on the belief that vocalisations relay discrete universally recognised emotions [3,4]. Cries are commonly thought to automatically invoke sadness, and laughter to excite joy [5]. However, the realisation that vocalisations rarely occur in a social void has led to an emerging understanding of how contexts moderate the interpretation of emotional vocalisations.…”