F0-related head movement in blind versus sighted speakers

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between head movement and fundamental frequency (F0) during speech by comparing continuous speech of congenitally blind and sighted speakers from YouTube videos. Positive correlations were found between F0 (measured in semitones) and vertical head movement for both speaker groups, with a stronger correlation for blind speakers. In addition, larger head movements and larger head movement per semitone ratios were observed for sighted speakers. These results suggest that physiological processes may account for part of the F0-related head movement and that sighted speakers use the visual modality to communicate F0 information through augmented head movement.

Origins of vocal-entangled gesture

“…Thus much more research is definitely needed for discovering the flexibility with which upper limb movements can create functional tension gradients around the respiratory system so as to participate in vocal actions. It is further possible that head gestures that are also known to couple to prosodic aspects of speech (Esteve-Gibert et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2020), also have their own unique physical effects on speech production. Thus, while we will not review work that suggests biomechanical speech interactions for head movements (Anegawa et al, 2008;Honda et al, 1999;Miller et al, 2012a,b), we do want to mention that such "head gestures" are potentially amenable to a similar approach we adopt here (for an interesting direction to pursue this topic see: Scarr and Harrison, 2017).…”