Similarities in the acoustic expression of emotions in English, German, Hindi, and Arabic.

Abstract

Based on the hypothesis that emotion expression is in large part biologically determined (“universal”), this study examined whether spoken utterances conveying seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and neutral) demonstrate similar acoustic patterns in four distinct languages (English, German, Hindi, and Arabic). Emotional pseudoutterances (the dirms are in the cindabal) were recorded by four native speakers of each language using an elicitation paradigm. Across languages, approximately 2500 utterances, which were perceptually identified as communicating the intended target emotion, were analyzed for three acoustic parameters: f0Mean, f0Range, and speaking rate. Combined variance in the three acoustic measures contributed significantly to differences among the seven emotions in each language, although f0Mean played the largest role for each language. Disgust, sadness, and neutral were always produced with a low f0Mean, whereas surprise (and usually fear and anger) exhibited an elevated f0Mean. Surprise displayed an extremely wide f0Range and disgust exhibited a much slower speaking rate than the other emotions in each language. Overall, the acoustic measures demonstrated many similarities among languages consistent with the notion of universal patterns of vocal emotion expression, although certain emotions were poorly predicted by the three acoustic measures and probably rely on additional acoustic parameters for perceptual recognition.

Vocal expression of emotions in mammals: mechanisms of production and evidence

“…Research on the coding process has revealed a set of acoustic characteristics that reliably indicate emotions (see next sections for more details; Zei Pollermann & Archinard, ; Scherer, ). The specific acoustic profile of several different emotions, showing similarities across languages, has been established (Hammerschmidt & Jürgens, ; Pell et al ., ). Studies on the decoding process have shown that people are able to extract accurate information about discrete emotions from vocal cues, even across cultures and languages (Scherer, Banse & Wallbott, ; Sauter et al ., ).…”