Emotional Voice Research Articles

Never second best?

The present study is based upon narrative, life‐history interviews with 20 polio survivors. The study focuses on the forming and reconstruction of identity with the late effects of polio as an important turning point for self‐understanding. In childhood and youth, the identities are described as adjustment‐oriented. The subjects inhabitated a dual world; the internal one, feeling different, and the external world, behaving as non‐disabled. As adults, before the onset of the late effects of polio, they were all somehow in the “normal mainstream”; by confirming important aspects of their normal identity on par with other non‐disabled people by means of marriage, parenthood and paid work. Their admittance to hospitals due to late effects of polio restored polio as an illness, but also enabled the emergence of the personal and emotional voices of the subjects through exchange of mutual awareness with other polio survivors. This appears to contribute to personal growth. The clinical implication from the study is that it is important to focus on the emotional and cognitive impact of early experiences in a narrative perspective in order for survivors to contribute to reconciliation with their life history

The recognition of emotion in the faces and voice of anorexia nervosa.

The aim of this study was to examine emotional recognition (prosodic and visual) in anorexia nervosa. Thirty people with anorexia nervosa and a comparison group of 30 healthy women were tested with facial and vocal stimuli that expressed specific emotions and they were given a neutral task. The group of women with anorexia nervosa was poor at emotional recognition. This was most marked for negative emotions in faces and for both positive and negative emotions in voices. This decreased ability to recognize negative affect in faces remained even after adjustment for confounding variables such as age, education, and depression. People with anorexia nervosa have difficulty recognizing emotions from facial expression and vocal tone. This may contribute to poor interpersonal communication and a lack of empathy, both of which are associated with anorexia nervosa patients.

Changes in emotion after circumscribed surgical lesions of the orbitofrontal and cingulate cortices.

To analyse the functions of different parts of the prefrontal cortex in emotion, patients with different prefrontal surgical excisions were compared on four measures of emotion: voice and face emotional expression identification, social behaviour, and the subjective experience of emotion. Some patients with bilateral lesions of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) had deficits in voice and face expression identification, and the group had impairments in social behaviour and significant changes in their subjective emotional state. Some patients with unilateral damage restricted to the OFC also had deficits in voice expression identification, and the group did not have significant changes in social behaviour or in their subjective emotional state. Patients with unilateral lesions of the antero-ventral part of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and/or medial Brodmann area (BA) 9 were, in some cases, impaired on voice and face expression identification, had some change in social behaviour, and had significant changes in their subjective emotional state. Patients with unilateral lesions of the OFC and of the ACC and/or medial BA 9 were, in some cases, impaired on voice and face expression identification, had some changes in social behaviour, and had significant changes in their subjective emotional state. Patients with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex lesions or with medial lesions outside ACC and medial BA 9 areas (dorsolateral/other medial group) were unimpaired on any of these measures of emotion. In all cases in which voice expression identification was impaired, there were no deficits in control tests of the discrimination of unfamiliar voices and the recognition of environmental sounds. Thus bilateral or unilateral lesions circumscribed surgically within the OFC can impair emotional voice and/or face expression identification, but significant changes in social behaviour and in subjective emotional state are related to bilateral lesions. Importantly, unilateral lesions of the ACC (including some of medial BA 9) can produce voice and/or face expression identification deficits, and marked changes in subjective emotional state. These findings with surgically circumscribed lesions show that within the prefrontal cortex, both the OFC and the ACC/medial BA 9 region are involved in a number of aspects of emotion in humans including emotion identification, social behaviour and subjective emotional state, and that the dorsolateral prefrontal areas are not involved in emotion in these ways.

Is emotion processing a predictor of functional outcome in schizophrenia?

Deficits in the ability to perceive facial and vocal emotion expression are common in schizophrenia. However, relatively little is known about how such deficits might affect functional outcomes. This prospective study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between perception of emotion and aspects of psychosocial functioning, including family relationships, social relationships, work functioning, and independent living/self-care in 94 clinically stabilized schizophrenia outpatients from five community-based rehabilitation programs. Emotion perception (facial emotion, voice emotion, and affect perception) and psychosocial outcome (Strauss and Carpenter Outcome Scale and Role Functioning Scale) were assessed at baseline and after 12 months of psychosocial rehabilitation. Significant associations were found between perception of emotion and work functioning/independent living both cross-sectionally and prospectively over the 12 months. Causal explanatory models suggested that perception of emotion might cause work functioning/independent living outcome over 1 year. The results remained significant when conceptual disorganization was statistically controlled. We did not find differences between men and women in the correlations between emotion perception and work functioning/independent living. Associations between social functioning/family relationships and perception of emotion were not significant. These findings suggest that emotion processing is a key determinant of work functioning/independent living for individuals with serious mental illness.

Fear recognition in the voice is modulated by unconsciously recognized facial expressions but not by unconsciously recognized affective pictures.

Multisensory integration is a powerful mechanism for increasing adaptive responses, as illustrated by binding of fear expressed in a face with fear present in a voice. To understand the role of awareness in intersensory integration of affective information we studied multisensory integration under conditions of conscious and nonconscious processing of the visual component of an audiovisual stimulus pair. Auditory-event-related potentials were measured in two patients (GY and DB) who were unable to perceive visual stimuli consciously because of striate cortex damage. To explore the role of conscious vision of audiovisual pairing, we also compared audiovisual integration in either naturalistic pairings (a facial expression paired with an emotional voice) or semantic pairings (an emotional picture paired with the same voice). We studied the hypothesis that semantic pairings, unlike naturalistic pairings, might require mediation by intact visual cortex and possibly by feedback to primary cortex from higher cognitive processes. Our results indicate that presenting incongruent visual affective information together with the voice translates as an amplitude decrease of auditory-event-related potentials. This effect obtains for both naturalistic and semantic pairings in the intact field, but is restricted to the naturalistic pairings in the blind field.

Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences

My main focus is to reveal the existence of global influences on the development and teaching of somatic principles and disciplines and to discuss why these influences are not in the forefront of somatic inquiry. I hypothesize that the search for “the universal” or “the humanistic” or “the biological” as a throughline of body-mind investigation has encouraged a monocultural approach to somatic pedagogy and the promotion of the field. Second, it is of interest that it has been through the work of those founders of somatic disciplines who are women that it has become possible to retrace more easily some of these global influences on twenty-first-century somatic studies. I also posit that through the lives and experiences of women leaders a more emotional voice enters the holistic paradigm. This paper aims to raise questions, not to be exhaustive in its pursuit of data regarding all the intercultural complications of somatic practices, including questions emerging from gender politics. It is a continuation of the inquiry, begun during the panel “Paradigms and Approaches: The Future of Somatics in Dance” at the Dancing in the Millennium conference in July 2000 (jointly sponsored by CORD, SDHS, DCA, NDEO. LIMS, NDA. among others) regarding the dissolution of any potentially monolithic views of the history and etiology of “somatics,” as well as somatic movement applications in dance (Green 2000; Fortin 2000), with a specific eye to examining how cultural and religious movement practices from diverse cultures have provided philosophical underpinnings and influential theories and practices to the field.

Recognition of emotion in English voices by speakers of Japanese, Spanish and English

This paper examines the ability of native and non-native speakers of English to hear English speakers' voices and interpret the emotions being portrayed. In the study native speakers of Japanese, Spanish and English listened to audio tapes in which professional actors portrayed emotions and they identified the portrayed emotions by selecting from among eight possibilities. Results suggest major differences between native and non-native listeners in their ability to identify emotions expressed in voice. Also an analysis of judgements made by ESL learners at different proficiency levels did not show an increase in ability to judge the emotional content of English speech with increased language proficiency. This suggests that the ability to accurately judge emotions being portrayed through vocal cues in a second language may not be acquired by L2 learners without extensive exposure in a native context or without special attention to developing these skills in an instructional context.

Adolescent Neuropsychological Development After Early Right Prefrontal Cortex Damage

Adolescent development and pattern of recovery are described for a 15-year-old boy who sustained extensive right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage at age 7 from rupture and surgical treatment of a deep arteriovenous malformation. Follow-up evaluations at 4 years and most recently 8 years after illness have shown clear improvement in social-behavioral and almost all cognitive areas initially assessed. He demonstrated resolution of left hemispatial neglect and other visuospatial impairments in working memory, design fluency, and planning and organization. However, at the 8-year follow-up interval, an acquired form of attention deficit disorder remains evident. We hypothesized that this is the likely cause of comparatively lower scores in general intelligence, verbal learning and memory, discourse, and processing speed, than at the 4-year follow-up interval. New measures of emotional face and voice recognition showed only minor difficulties, principally in identifying vocal disgust and fear. Social and psychological maturation has continued to improve, with no evidence of developmental arrest or pervasive social impairment, although the individual is confused at times by complexities and nuances of social interaction. The pattern of findings 8 years after early right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage suggests remarkable recovery of primary visuospatial and social impairments, but lingering and somewhat worsening performance deficits which may be due to attentional difficulties and impulsive responding. Treatment of the attentional difficulties is currently being investigated.

Intended Carefulness Ratings for Voiced Warning Statements

The parameters that affect the efficacy of voiced warnings have only recently begun to be investigated. The current study examines the effects on intended carefulness ratings for voiced warning statements considering the following factors: sex of speaker, sex of participant, voice style (monotone, emotional, whisper), and sound level (low, high). Warning statements voiced in the emotional voice style and in a higher sound level produced the higher intended carefulness ratings. Implications for the design of voiced warnings are discussed.

Robert Frost and feminine literary tradition

In spite of Robert Frost's continuing popularity with the public, the poet remains an outsider in the academy, where more difficult and innovative poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are presented as the great American modernists. Robert Frost and Feminine Literary Tradition considers the reason for this disparity, exploring the relationship among notions of popularity, masculinity, and greatness. Karen Kilcup reveals Frost's subtle links with earlier feminine traditions like sentimental poetry and New England regionalist fiction, traditions fostered by such well-known women precursors and contemporaries as Lydia Sigourney, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. She argues that Frost altered and finally obscured these feminine voices and values that informed his earlier published work and that to appreciate his achievement fully, we need to recover and acknowledge the power of his affective, emotional voice in counterpoint and collaboration with his more familiar ironic and humorous tones.

Emotion in speech: the acoustic attributes of fear, anger, sadness, and joy.

Decoders can detect emotion in voice with much greater accuracy than can be achieved by objective acoustic analysis. Studies that have established this advantage, however, used methods that may have favored decoders and disadvantaged acoustic analysis. In this study, we applied several methodologic modifications for the analysis of the acoustic differentiation of fear, anger, sadness, and joy. Thirty-one female subjects between the ages of 18 and 35 (encoders) were audio-recorded during an emotion-induction procedure and produced a total of 620 emotion-laden sentences. Twelve female judges (decoders), three for each of the four emotions, were assigned to rate the intensity of one emotion each. Their combined ratings were used to select 38 prototype samples per emotion. Past acoustic findings were replicated, and increased acoustic differentiation among the emotions was achieved. Multiple regression analysis suggested that some, although not all, of the acoustic variables were associated with decoders' ratings. Signal detection analysis gave some insight into this disparity. However, the analysis of the classic constellation of acoustic variables may not completely capture the acoustic features that influence decoders' ratings. Future analyses would likely benefit from the parallel assessment of respiration, phonation, and articulation.

Perception of emotion and neurocognitive functioning in schizophrenia: what's the link?

In schizophrenia, relatively little is known about the association between deficits in emotion perception and basic neurocognitive functioning. The present study examined perception of emotion and a discrete set of neurocognitive functions in 28 treatment-resistant schizophrenic patients. Measures of emotion perception included a facial emotion identification test (still photographs presented on videotape), a voice emotion identification test (audiotape), and an affect perception test (brief interpersonal vignettes presented on videotape). Measures of neurocognitive functioning were selected based on hypothesized relationships to perception of emotion. These measures included: (a) Span of Apprehension task, a measure of early visual processing, visual scanning, and iconic read-out; (b) Degraded-Stimulus Continuous Performance Test, a measure of visual vigilance; and (c) Digit Span Distractibility Test, a measure of immediate or working memory. Among these measures, performance on the Span of Apprehension strongly correlated with performance on all three emotion perception tasks. The associations between perception of emotion and the other two measures were in the same direction, but were significantly smaller than those of the Span of Apprehension. These findings implicate the importance of early perceptual processing (i.e. visual scanning) in the ability of schizophrenic individuals to perceive emotion.

Risperidone versus haloperidol for perception of emotion in treatment-resistant schizophrenia: preliminary findings

Currently, little is known about the pharmacological effects of the new generation of antipsychotic medications on perception of emotion in schizophrenia. The present study was designed to compare the effects of risperidone versus haloperidol on the ability to perceive emotion in 20 treatment-resistant schizophrenia patients, using a double-blind design. Measures of emotion perception included a facial emotion identification test (still photographs presented on videotape), a voice emotion identification test (audiotape), and an effect perception test (brief interpersonal vignettes presented on videotape). These measures were administered during the final week of baseline and after 8 weeks of double-blind medication. Risperidone treatment produced a greater effect on patients' ability to perceive emotion compared with haloperidol treatment. Additionally, all patients who received risperidone demonstrated improvement in performance between baseline and retest, compared with four of the nine patients who received haloperidol. When changes in positive symptoms were statistically controlled, the results remained significant. These findings suggest that risperidone may facilitate patients' ability to accurately perceive emotion, an effect which may be mediated either directly by risperidone's pharmacological action or perhaps indirectly by its influence on basic neurocognition.

Popular music, gender, and postmodernism: anger is an energy

PART ONE No Respect for Suffering: An Introduction to Postmodernism The Vicious History of Aesthetics Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism on Mass Culture and Ressentiment Collaborating with the Oppressors Postmodern Academics on Music Kurt Cobain Died for Your Sins Postmodernism in Music Journalism PART TWO Emotional Rescue Feminist Philosophy on Anger The Post-Postmodern Voice Emotion and Writing about Music The Riot Grrrls and Carnival

Remembrance of Emotional Speech: Improvement and Impairment of Incidental Verbal Memory by Emotional Voice

Drawing on a growing body of literature on the attention-capturing potential of emotional stimuli, two studies examined some mnemonic consequences of an exposure to emotionally spoken communications. Subjects (total N=108) performed a memory span task, in which they were to commit to memory either 2 or 4 2-digit numbers for 20 s. During this interval, a spoken sentence varying in emotional intonation was presented as a distraction stimulus. When the load of the memory span task was heavy, emotional intonations, especially negative ones,improvedincidental verbal memory of the sentence. By contrast, when the load was light, both emotionally positive and negative intonationsimpairedthe incidental verbal memory. These findings were interpreted to support the hypothesis that when a message is delivered in an emotional voice, it captures attention and, further, that the attention thus allocated to the message is divided between the voice and the verbal tone. Implications for the operation of selective attention in daily social settings were discussed.

Vocology: the psychological underpinning of voice

From the first sound a baby makes, emotion is expressed in ‘the raw’. The tense shrill cries of hunger and pain are contrasted with the relaxed vocal set in gurgling and laughter. As we grow up, the interrelationship between voice and emotion becomes harder to untangle. The power of voice and poignancy of emotion is confirmed artistically by masters such as Pavarotti, while voice therapists try to unravel the complexities of emotion and voice disorder.

Expression of emotion in voice and music

Vocal communication of emotion is biologically adaptive for socially living species and has therefore evolved in a phylogenetically continuous manner. Human affect bursts or interjections can be considered close parallels to animal affect vocalizations. The development of speech, unique to the human species, has relied on the voice as a carrier signal, and thus emotion effects on the voice become audible during speech. This article reviews (a) the evidence on listeners' ability to accurately identify a speaker's emotion from voice cues alone, (b) the research efforts trying to isolate the acoustic features that determine listener judgments, and (c) the findings on actual acoustic concomitants of a speaker's emotional state (real or portrayed by actors). Finally, based on speculations about the joint origin of speech and vocal music in nonlinguistic affect vocalizations, similarities of emotion expression in speech and music are discussed.

Naming emotion in faces and voices: Abilities and disabilities in autism and mental retardation

Groups of autistic and non‐autistic retarded adolescents and young adults, individually matched for CA and verbal MA, together with a group of normal young children individually matched for verbal MA, were tested for their ability to name photographs of emotionally expressive faces and emotion‐unrelated photographs of objects, and to name corresponding sounds recorded on audiotape. The results indicated that although BPVS‐matched autistic and non‐autistic retarded subjects were not significantly different when the emotion tasks were considered in isolation, autistic subjects differed from non‐autistic retarded and normal subjects in being relatively poor at naming feelings vis‐à‐vis naming non‐personal objects. On the other hand, there was evidence that group differences between non‐autistic mentally retarded and normal subjects were not specific to the task of naming emotions. This raises doubt about claims that non‐autistic mentally retarded individuals have specific deficits in emotion recognition.

Emotion in the infant voice

L'étude de nombreux fragments d'axes silicifiés avec structure conservée collectés au Kazakhstan (U.R.S.S.) dans un niveau d'âge dévonien moyen et rapportés à l'espèce Xenocladia medullosina a permis de décrire leur structure complète, de préciser que leurs faisceaux vasculaires sont anastomosés et doivent être considérés comme des méristèles. La stèle de Xenocladia medullosina est fondamentalement monostélique et non polystélique; elle est polyméristélique. Par ailleurs, la mise en évidence de la présence de cette espèce dans de Dévonien moyen au Kazakhstan constitue un nouvel élément commun avec la flore de même âge des U.S.A. ce qui va à l'encontre de l'idée d'une province floristique particulière au Kazakhstan durant le Dévonien moyen.The study of numerous silicified pieces of axis withtheir structure preserved collected in Kazakhstan (U.S.S.R.) from a horizon dated as middle Devonian and referred to the species Xenocladia medullosina has made it possible to describe their structure, and demonstrates that their vascular strands anastomose and should be considered as meristeles. The stele of Xenocladia medullosina is fundamentally monostelic and not polystelic; it is polymeristelic. The evidence for the occurrence of the species Xenocladia medullosina in the middle Devonian of Kazakhstan constitues a new common element with floras of the same age in the U.S.A., which weakens the concept of a distinctive floristic province in Kazakhstan during the middle Devonian.

Discrimination and identification of emotions in human voice by brain-damaged subjects.

Discrimination and identification of emotions in human voice was studied in normal controls and in 4 groups of brain-damaged subjects, subdivided along the right/left and anterior/posterior dimensions. Results showed a failure of right-brain-damaged patients, the right posterior group being significantly worse than all the other groups. Qualitative differences emerged as well: both a conceptual and an acoustic deficit seem to contribute to right posterior patient performance.