Uncovering Gender-Specific and Cross-Gender Features in Mandarin Deception: An Acoustic and Electroglottographic Approach

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) profiles of Mandarin deception, including global characteristics and the influence of gender. Method: Thirty-six Mandarin speakers participated in an interactive interview game in which they provided both deceptive and truthful answers to 14 biographical questions. Acoustic and EGG signals of the participants' responses were simultaneously recorded; 20 acoustic and 14 EGG features were analyzed using binary logistic regression models. Results: Increases in fundamental frequency ( F 0) mean, intensity mean, first formant (F1), fifth formant (F5), contact quotient (CQ), decontacting-time quotient (DTQ), and contact index (CI) as well as decreases in jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), and fourth formant (F4) were significantly correlated with global deception. Cross-gender features included increases in intensity mean and F5 and decreases in jitter, HNR, and F4, whereas gender-specific features encompassed increases in F 0 mean, shimmer, F1, third formant, and DTQ, as well as decreases in F 0 maximum and CQ for female deception, and increases in CQ and CI and decreases in shimmer for male deception. Conclusions: The results suggest that Mandarin deception could be tied to underlying pragmatic functions, emotional arousal, decreased glottal contact skewness, and more pressed phonation. Disparities in gender-specific features lend support to differences in the use of pragmatics, levels of deception-induced emotional arousal, skewness of glottal contact patterns, and phonation types.