The Integration of Laughter and Speech in Vocal Communication

Abstract

Laughter in infant-directed speech was examined in 13 mother-infant pairs to investigate the possible co-occurrence of speech and laughter. Contrary to previous findings in adult-adult social interaction, all mothers produced speech simultaneously with laughter in up to 50% of laughs. In most of these speech-laughs the onset of laugh and speech was simultaneous. Laughter occurred on both function and content words and was more likely to occur on approximately 2 words and on utterances that were statements rather than questions or exclamations. Laughter and speech are different outcomes produced from a reorganization of the same vocal/anatomical parameters. A 3rd outcome is possible in the form of speech-laughs utilizing features from both laughter and speech. In speech-laughs, the duration of the vocalization was more likely to increase, and the changes in the utterance were likely to include 1 or more of the features of vowel elongation, syllabic pulsation, breathiness, and pitch change. These findings and individual variations in the resulting vocal output are discussed from a dynamic systems perspective. It is argued that neither speech nor laughter is dominant when both are combined, but that this is a more complex vocal outcome produced with idiosyncratic flexibility within stable temporal and physiological constraints.

Formant Characteristics of Human Laughter

“…The mean F0 was 199 Hz for male and 476 Hz for female speakers, respectively, which is well within the range of previously reported F0 for laughter (mean-F0 range males (females) 160-502 Hz (126-424 Hz) [1,3,4,14,16,17,19,22,23]). Thus, our data are in accordance with the finding that fundamental frequency in laughter is higher than in speech [17-19, 23, 24].…”

When do we laugh?

“…For the main analysis, we include in our analysis both laughter and speech laughter (Nwokah et al, 1999). In the current study we restrict our observations about the aspects pertaining to the form, to the contextual distribution and positioning of a laugh in relation to others' laughter, the laughable and laugher's herself speech.…”

Detection of Laughter-in-Interaction in Multichannel Close-Talk Microphone Recordings of Meetings

“…The corresponding segmentation of laugh bouts [17] has recently been built for this data [1,18] using the available mark-up in the orthographic transcription and a combination of automatic and manual alignment methods. Intervals during which a participant both laughs and speaks (a phenomenon referred to as "speech-laughs" [19]) have been mapped to speech only, such that the categories of silence N , speech S, and laughter L are mutually exclusive.…”