The contribution of speech rate and pitch variation to the perception of vocal emotions in a German and an American sample

Abstract

The present study examined acoustic cue utilisation for perception of vocal emotions. Two sets of vocal-emotional stimuli were presented to 35 German and 30 American listeners: (1) sentences in German spoken with five different vocal emotions; and (2) systematically rate-or pitch-altered versions of the original emotional stimuli. In addition to response frequencies on emotional categories, activity ratings were obtained. For the systematically altered stimuli, slow rate was reliably associated with the ''sad'' label. In contrast, fast rate was classified as angry, frightened, or neutral. Manipulation of pitch variation was less potent than rate manipulation in influencing vocal emotional category choices. Reduced pitch variation was associated with perception as sad or neutral; greater pitch variation increased frightened, angry, and happy responses. Performance was highly similar for the two samples, although across tasks, German subjects perceived greater variability of activity in the emotional stimuli than did American participants.Little is known about the contribution of single acoustic parameters to the perception of specific vocal emotions. Therefore, the primary goal of the present investigation was to examine the effects of systematic acoustic manipulation of vocal emotional stimuli on listeners' perception. In addition, even less is known about the cross-cultural processing of vocal emotions (emotional prosody), as the majority of cross-cultural studies have focused on cue utilisation in the perception ). Thus, a second, more exploratory aim was to compare two different nations (American, German) on the same set of stimuli to address questions about sample differences in the perception of emotional tones of voice. Acoustic correlates of vocal emotionsDifferent emotions are cued by different combinations of acoustic parameters, with speech rate and fundamental frequency (F0; the acoustic correlate of perceived pitch in a speaker's voice) presumably exerting the strongest effect (Banse

Eros, Beauty, and Phon-Aesthetic Judgements of Language Sound. We Like It Flat and Fast, but Not Melodious. Comparing Phonetic and Acoustic Features of 16 European Languages

“…A rising F0 contour evokes active emotions, whereas a falling F0 contour is associated with passive emotions ( Cordes, 2000 ). The same holds true for pitch variation: happy, angry, and frightened responses increase with higher pitch variation and the perception of sad and angry stimuli is influenced by lower pitch variation ( Breitenstein et al, 2001 ).…”

Vocal Synchrony in Psychotherapy

“…Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2012), a phonetics analysis software program, was used to analyze acoustic properties of the session recordings. Because the original recordings were made on one audio channel, annotation of the beginning and end of each therapist or client speech turn was demarcated in Praat so that the software could distinguish between the two speakers.…”

Persuasion of voices: The effects of a speaker’s voice characteristics and gender on consumers’ responses

“…Outcomes of voice arousal: The role of acoustic inferences. In addition, arousing voices such as high (vs low), bright (vs dull), and rough (vs smooth) voices would induce stronger perceptions of excitement and joy and weaker perceptions of calm, sadness, and warmth (Banse and Scherer, 1996;Bänziger et al, 2014;Breitenstein, Van Lancker and Daum, 2001;Laukka et al, 2005). Thus, listeners would infer meanings based on the acoustic properties of voices.…”