Vocal Parameters of Speech and Singing Covary and Are Related to Vocal Attractiveness, Body Measures, and Sociosexuality: A Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract

Perceived vocal attractiveness and measured sex-dimorphic vocal parameters are both associated with underlying individual qualities. Research tends to focus on speech but singing is another highly evolved communication system that has distinct and universal features with analogs in other species, and it is relevant in mating. Both speaking and singing voice provides relevant information about its producer. We tested whether speech and singing function as “backup signals” that indicate similar underlying qualities. Using a sample of 81 men and 86 women from Brazil and the Czech Republic, we investigated vocal attractiveness rated from speech and singing and its association with fundamental frequency (F0), apparent vocal tract length (VTL), body characteristics, and sociosexuality. F0, VTL, and rated attractiveness of singing and speaking voice strongly correlated within the same individual. Lower-pitched speech in men, higher-pitched speech and singing in women, individuals who like to sing more, and singing of individuals with a higher pitch modulation were perceived as more attractive. In men, physical size positively predicted speech and singing attractiveness. Male speech but not singing attractiveness was associated with higher sociosexuality. Lower-pitched male speech was related to higher sociosexuality, while lower-pitched male singing was linked to lower sociosexuality. Similarly, shorter speech VTL and longer singing VTL predicted higher sociosexuality in women. Different vocal displays function as “backup signals” cueing to attractiveness and body size, but their relation to sexual strategies in men and women differs. Both singing and speech may indicate evolutionarily relevant individual qualities shaped by sexual selection.

Human voice pitch measures are robust across a variety of speech recordings: methodological and theoretical implications

“…Beyond these methodological implications, our results corroborate a growing number of studies showing that individual differences in voice pitch emerge early in life and are remarkably stable across an individual's lifetime [19,20], across diverse neutral speech utterances (this study), and even when comparing neutral speech with singing [37], with emotional speech [29,38] or with volitional nonverbal vocalizations such as screams and aggressive roars [29]. Thus, while the present study focuses on affectively neutral speech, past studies provide further evidence that betweenperson differences in voice pitch also generalize to emotional voice stimuli and remain stable as people age.…”

Individual differences in human voice pitch are preserved from speech to screams, roars and pain cries

“…While it is possible that idiosyncratic differences in F0 between different vocalizers might be overridden by the more extreme F0 modulations that characterize agonistic and distress vocalizations, existing data on the F0 profiles of human grunts [15], roars [16], laughs and cries [19] indicate that such vocalizations retain a degree of sexual dimorphism, wherein men produce relatively lower-pitched vocalizations than do women. There is also preliminary evidence that within each sex, F0 in modal speech correlates with F0 in sung speech [20], and that cues to individual identity are retained in valenced human speech [21], laughter [22], cries [23], and in the screams of both humans ( [24], cf. [25]) and non-human primates [26] (with the caveat that speaker recognition is substantially reduced from these vocalizations compared to modal speech among human listeners [21,22,25]).…”

The natural history of musical rhythm: functional and mechanistic theories on the evolution of human rhythm cognition and the relevance of rhythmic animal behaviors

“…Most arguments for the common origins of musicality and speech are theoretical, being the result of examining data from various areas of speech and music research in order to find similarities between the two. Such comparisons suggest that speech and singing engage overlapping neural networks (e.g., Musso et al, 2015;Özdemir et al, 2006), rely on similar mechanisms of emotional modulation (Brown, 2017;Filippi, 2016) and emotional induction (Ma & Thompson, 2015), exhibit certain structural similarities (such as generativity and hierarchical organization : Fitch, 2006), and attractiveness ratings for speaking and singing correlate within the same individual (Valentova, 2019). As critics have pointed out, however, such similarities may be the result of confounding variables, such as common neuromotor systems connected to auditory input and vocal output (Zatorre & Baum, 2012).…”