Discrete ratings and dimensional judgments of emotional speech: A preliminary look at gender differences

Abstract

Two models of emotion identification and discrimination are not often compared and may show differing trends in how listeners rate emotional stimuli. The discrete or “basic” emotion model posits that emotions are categorical, and that listeners develop auditory prototypes of “basic” emotions (e.g., anger) based on their acoustic profile and past experiences. More complex emotions (e.g., frustration) fall under a “basic” category. The dimensional model examines emotions along continua of different emotional dimensions, such as activation/arousal and pleasantness/valence. The present study introduces the Morgan Emotional Speech Set and examines listener judgments of the stimuli in the corpus. The database consists of 2160 emotional speech sentences (90 sentences x 4 emotions x 6 talkers) produced by three male and three female actors for use in future studies. Each sentence was rated by 10 listeners (5 male, 5 female), who assigned an emotion category to each sentence and also rated each sentence by its activation (low to high) and pleasantness (very unpleasant to very pleasant). Discrete ratings will be compared with dimensional judgments made by listeners to examine intended and perceived emotional content in the database. A preliminary look at gender differences in the ratings and judgments will also be discussed, as male and female listeners may rate emotions differently for same- or different-sex talkers.