functions (e.g., emotion, cognition, etc.)
- regulating flow of conversation
- emotional states
- cognition (i.e. pauses)
- speaker characteristics
- information (i.e. content meaning)
- impressions (i.e. power)
vocal qualities and vocalizations
- qualities: vary from speaker to speaker (articulation, resonance, thinness), ex: Keith Richards has bad articulation
- vocalizations: characteristics that are modified by all speakers (loudness, pitch, stress)
temporal characteristics (e.g., response latency, phonetic pause, silent pause, etc.)
-aspects of speech that are a function of time (speech rate, pause duration, response latency)
PAUSES:
-phoentic: duration of 250ms
-filled: duration>250ms, but has sound to it (e.g. umm, ahh)
personality factors and vocal qualities
- extraversion:answer back fast, fewer silent pauses, gen. more fluent speech, faster, louder
- introversion: slower speech, pauses, repetition, stuttering (speech errors), quiet, withdrawn)
- dominance: overlap with extraversion, loud and fast, fluent, not many errors
- “type A behavior”: urgent, impatient, speech rate faster, louder volume, need environment to bring it out in them)
emotional states and vocal qualities
- ANGER: high pitch, wide pitch range, loud, fast
- JOY: same as anger
- SAD: low pitch, narrow pitch range, quiet, slow
what are some of the ways that researchers have studied paralanguage and emotion?
- read standard passage
- random splicing
- electronic content filtering
- synthesize voices (or voice characteristics)
the impact of anxiety on the voice (esp. hesitations and speech rate)
- more speech disturbance ratio
- more response latency
- higher speech rate
- negative affect on arousal on performance
cognitive load and vocal qualities (pauses, hesitancies, etc.)
- speech production is cognitively demanding
- decision making leads to hesitations
- hesitations cluster at beginning of clauses
- abstract nouns more latency than concrete nouns
sex differences in vocal qualities
-easiest difference to identify from the voice: PITCH or fundamental frequency
age and voice pitch, pause rate
-men have high pitch then lowers down then stays the same then goes a little higher once older, changes way more than woman voices
decoding trustworthiness and expertise from speech rate
-faster seem more trustworthy
what effect does amount of talk and pitch have on decoders?
- correlated with: leadership, control, power, status
- better to have something to say than nothing
what makes for an “attractive” voice? how are attractive voices associated with facial qualities?
- loudness range
- lack of monotone
- resonance (smooth, strong)
- lack of nasality (fran example)
- good articulation
how soon can children discriminate their mother’s voice?
- born with ability to recognize and discriminate mothers voice
- 38.4 weeks
what is the effect of filled pauses on recall?
- recalled content of the story best when there were filled pauses
- may direct attention to the speech steam and this aids in recall
interactive aspects of interruptions, accent, interruptions, tempo, loudness, and talk duration
- accent and dialect: accomodation/imitation of dialect, only face to face, unconcious
- interruptions: success depends upon difference in loudness between speakers and how much loudness increases from normal level of dialogue. Interruption leads to interruption
- loudness and duration: usually try to match with each other
