Acoustical Analysis of Posed Prosodic Expressions: Effects of Emotion and Sex

Prosodic expression is an important channel of emotional communication and can be assessed through computerized acoustical analysis. Fundamental Frequency (F0) is the most commonly studied acoustic measure and considered the best index of perceived pitch. In this study, we examined two factors that...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Perceptual and motor skills 2003-06, Vol.96 (3), p.759-771
Main Authors: Viscovich, Nancy, Borod, Joan, Pihan, Hans, Peery, Shelley, Brickman, Adam M., Tabert, Matthias, Schmidt, Michael, Spielman, Jennifer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect
Analysis
Effects
Emotions
Female
Humans
Male
Sex Factors
Sexes
Speech
Speech Acoustics
Speech Production Measurement
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Prosodic expression is an important channel of emotional communication and can be assessed through computerized acoustical analysis. Fundamental Frequency (F0) is the most commonly studied acoustic measure and considered the best index of perceived pitch. In this study, we examined two factors that can influence prosodic expression, sex and emotion type, A special feature is the use of a neutral expression as a control measure. We also described procedures for eliciting posed prosodic expression via an experimental task from the New York Emotion Battery. Subjects were healthy men (n=10) and women (n=9), matched for. age (M = 29.2 yr.) and education (M= 15.6 yr). Subjects were asked to intone neutral-content sentences with happy, sad, and neutral prosody. F0 mean and standard deviation were measured using the Computerized Speech Lab program. Initial findings indicated that women produced significantly higher F0 values than did men and that happy sentences were produced with significantly higher F0 values than were sad sentences. When semitone conversions were applied and neutral prosody was subtracted out, differences remained for emotion type but not for sex. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for the assessment and treatment of prosody in clinical populations.
ISSN:0031-5125
1558-688X
DOI:10.2466/pms.2003.96.3.759