Abstract
Psychological and physiological stress in the environment can induce a different stress response in different individuals. Given the causal relationship between stress, mental health, and psychopathologies, as well as its impact on individuals’ executive functioning and performance, identifying the extent of stress response in individuals can be useful for providing targeted support to those who are in need. In this paper, we identify and validate features in speech that can be used as indicators of stress response in individuals to develop speech-based measures of stress response. We evaluate effectiveness of two types of tasks used for collecting speech samples in developing stress response measures, namely Read Speech Task and Open-Ended Question Task. Participants completed these tasks, along with the verbal fluency task (an established measure of executive functioning) before and after clinically validated stress induction to see if the changes in the speech-based features are associated with the stress-induced decline in executive functioning. Further, we supplement our analyses with an extensive, external assessment of the individuals’ stress tolerance in the real life to validate the usefulness of the speech-based measures in predicting meaningful outcomes outside of the experimental setting.
Highlights
A Psychological and physiological stress in the environment can induce a different stress response in different individuals
One strategy to identify potentially relevant features associated with stress response from among the 45 extracted features (44 in case of Open-ended Question Task) is to find the ones that can distinguish between the Neutral and the Stress conditions
We found that duration and a time domain feature Zero Crossing Rate extracted from Read Speech Task showed significant difference between the two stress conditions with p
Summary
A Psychological and physiological stress in the environment can induce a different stress response in different individuals. Given the causal relationship between stress, mental health, and psychopathologies, as well as its impact on individuals’ executive functioning and performance, identifying the extent of stress response in individuals can be useful for providing targeted support to those who are in need. For examused for collecting speech samples in developing stress response measures, namely Read Speech Task and Open-Ended Question Task. Participants completed these tasks, along with the verbal fluency task (an established measure of executive functioning) before and after clinically validated stress induction to see if the changes in the speech-based features are associated with the stress-induced decline in executive functioning. Long-term exposure to stress can play a significant An extensive body of research has shown the imrole in the formation and exacerbation of mental pact of stress on speech, e.g., Jackson et al (2016); disorders, such as anxiety disorders, depression, Jena and Singh (2016); Schuller et al (2014); Gidand schizophrenia (Gomes and Grace, 2017; Yang dens et al (2013); Lierde et al (2009); He et al
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