Listener Sex Research Articles

Physiological and Behavioral Responses to Vocalization Playback in Mice.

In mice, the caller’s production of social vocalizations has been extensively studied but the effect of these vocalizations on the listener is less understood, with playback studies to date utilizing one vocalization category or listeners of one sex. This study examines how several categories of mouse vocalizations affect listeners of both sexes to better understand the communicative functions of these vocal categories. We examined physiological and behavioral responses of male and female CBA/CaJ mice to playback of four social vocalization categories: ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), low-frequency harmonic calls, mid-frequency vocalizations, and noisy calls. Based on the conditions under which these calls are emitted, we hypothesized that playback of these vocal categories would have differential effects on the listeners. In females, playback of all four vocalization categories increased stress hormone levels (corticosterone), but only the non-USV categories increased corticosterone in males. The magnitude of corticosterone increase in non-USV trials was greater in females than in males. In open field tests, all four vocal categories decreased central ambulation in males and females, indicating an increase in anxiety-related behavior. Further, we found that the proportions of USVs emitted by subjects, but not their overall calling rates, were affected by playback of some vocal categories, suggesting that vocalization categories have different communication content. These results show that, even in the absence of behavioral and acoustic contextual features, each vocal category evokes physiological and behavioral responses in mice, with some differences in responses as a function of the listener’s sex and playback signal. These findings suggest that at least some of the vocal categories have distinct communicative functions.

Effects of Age and Hearing Loss on the Recognition of Emotions in Speech.

Emotional communication is a cornerstone of social cognition and informs human interaction. Previous studies have shown deficits in facial and vocal emotion recognition in older adults, particularly for negative emotions. However, few studies have examined combined effects of aging and hearing loss on vocal emotion recognition by adults. The objective of this study was to compare vocal emotion recognition in adults with hearing loss relative to age-matched peers with normal hearing. We hypothesized that age would play a role in emotion recognition and that listeners with hearing loss would show deficits across the age range. Thirty-two adults (22 to 74 years of age) with mild to severe, symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss, amplified with bilateral hearing aids and 30 adults (21 to 75 years of age) with normal hearing, participated in the study. Stimuli consisted of sentences spoken by 2 talkers, 1 male, 1 female, in 5 emotions (angry, happy, neutral, sad, and scared) in an adult-directed manner. The task involved a single-interval, five-alternative forced-choice paradigm, in which the participants listened to individual sentences and indicated which of the five emotions was targeted in each sentence. Reaction time was recorded as an indirect measure of cognitive load. Results showed significant effects of age. Older listeners had reduced accuracy, increased reaction times, and reduced d' values. Normal hearing listeners showed an Age by Talker interaction where older listeners had more difficulty identifying male vocal emotion. Listeners with hearing loss showed reduced accuracy, increased reaction times, and lower d' values compared with age-matched normal-hearing listeners. Within the group with hearing loss, age and talker effects were significant, and low-frequency pure-tone averages showed a marginally significant effect. Contrary to other studies, once hearing thresholds were taken into account, no effects of listener sex were observed, nor were there effects of individual emotions on accuracy. However, reaction times and d' values showed significant differences between individual emotions. The results of this study confirm existing findings in the literature showing that older adults show significant deficits in voice emotion recognition compared with their normally hearing peers, and that among listeners with normal hearing, age-related changes in hearing do not predict this age-related deficit. The present results also add to the literature by showing that hearing impairment contributes additionally to deficits in vocal emotion recognition, separate from deficits related to age. These effects of age and hearing loss appear to be quite robust, being evident in reduced accuracy scores and d' measures, as well as in reaction time measures.

Vocal threat enhances visual perception as a function of attention and sex.

This pre-registered event-related potential study explored how vocal emotions shape visual perception as a function of attention and listener sex. Visual task displays occurred in silence or with a neutral or an angry voice. Voices were task-irrelevant in a single-task block, but had to be categorized by speaker sex in a dual-task block. In the single task, angry voices increased the occipital N2 component relative to neutral voices in women, but not men. In the dual task, angry voices relative to neutral voices increased occipital N1 and N2 components, as well as accuracy, in women and marginally decreased accuracy in men. Thus, in women, vocal anger produced a strong, multifaceted visual enhancement comprising attention-dependent and attention-independent processes, whereas in men, it produced a small, behavior-focused visual processing impairment that was strictly attention-dependent. In sum, these data indicate that attention and listener sex critically modulate whether and how vocal emotions shape visual perception.

Racial categorization and word identification: The influence of sex, race and regional dialect

The speech signal provides information on talker characteristics including socio-ethnic affiliation and racial identity. Regional variation, both similar and divergent from White American English, has been described in African American English. However, it is unknown if such regional dialect variation influences listeners’ racial categorization or word identification accuracy. This work evaluated the influence of listeners’ sex, race, and regional dialect on racial categorization and word identification for Black and White talkers from two dialect regions within North Carolina. Black and White listeners (n = 23) from eastern and central North Carolina participated. In the racial categorization task, listeners heard /hVd/ words produced by male and female Black and White talkers from eastern and western North Carolina. Listeners categorized the perceived talker race for each token as Black or White. In the word identification task, the same listeners matched the speech tokens from the same talkers to one of fourteen /hVd/ words. Results showed an effect of listener sex on word identification accuracy such that female listeners were more accurate than male listeners. No effect of listener race or regional dialect was observed for either task. Follow-up analyses will investigate the interaction between listener and talker sex, race, and regional dialect.

Sex differences in early sensorimotor processing for speech discrimination

Sensorimotor activity in speech perception tasks varies as a function of context, cognitive load, and cognitive ability. This study investigated listener sex as an additional variable. Raw EEG data were collected as 21 males and 21 females discriminated /ba/ and /da/ in quiet and noisy backgrounds. Independent component analyses of data from accurately discriminated trials identified sensorimotor mu components with characteristic alpha and beta peaks from 16 members of each sex. Time-frequency decompositions showed that in quiet discrimination, females displayed stronger early mu-alpha synchronization, whereas males showed stronger mu-beta desynchronization. Findings indicate that early attentional mechanisms for speech discrimination were characterized by sensorimotor inhibition in females and predictive sensorimotor activation in males. Both sexes showed stronger early sensorimotor inhibition in noisy discrimination conditions versus in quiet, suggesting sensory gating of the noise. However, the difference in neural activation between quiet and noisy conditions was greater in males than females. Though sex differences appear unrelated to behavioral accuracy, they suggest that males and females exhibit early sensorimotor processing for speech discrimination that is fundamentally different, yet similarly adaptable to adverse conditions. Findings have implications for understanding variability in neuroimaging data and the male prevalence in various neurodevelopmental disorders with inhibitory dysfunction.

Are there sex effects for speech intelligibility in American English? Examining the influence of talker, listener, and methodology.

Talker and listener sex in speech processing has been largely unknown and under-appreciated to this point, with many studies overlooking the possible influences. In the current study, the effects of both talker and listener sex on speech intelligibility were assessed. Different methodological approaches to measuring intelligibility (percent words correct vs. subjective rating scales) and collecting data (laboratory vs. crowdsourcing) were also evaluated. Findings revealed that, regardless of methodology, the spoken productions of female talkers were overall more intelligible than the spoken productions of male talkers; however, substantial variability across talkers was observed. Findings also revealed that when data were collected in the lab, there was an interaction between talker and listener sex. This interaction between listener and talker sex was not observed when subjective ratings were crowdsourced from listener subjects across the USA via Amazon Mechanical Turk, although overall ratings remained similar. This possibly suggests that subjective intelligibility ratings may be vulnerable to bias, and such biases may be reduced by recruiting a more heterogeneous subject pool. Many studies in speech perception do not account for these talker, listener, and methodology effects. However, the present results suggest that researchers should carefully consider these effects when assessing speech intelligibility in different conditions, and when comparing findings across studies that have used different subject demographics and/or methodologies.

Age differences in vocal emotion perception: on the role of speaker age and listener sex

ABSTRACTOlder adults have greater difficulty than younger adults perceiving vocal emotions. To better characterise this effect, we explored its relation to age differences in sensory, cognitive and emotional functioning. Additionally, we examined the role of speaker age and listener sex. Participants (N = 163) aged 19–34 years and 60–85 years categorised neutral sentences spoken by ten younger and ten older speakers with a happy, neutral, sad, or angry voice. Acoustic analyses indicated that expressions from younger and older speakers denoted the intended emotion with similar accuracy. As expected, younger participants outperformed older participants and this effect was statistically mediated by an age-related decline in both optimism and working-memory. Additionally, age differences in emotion perception were larger for younger as compared to older speakers and a better perception of younger as compared to older speakers was greater in younger as compared to older participants. Last, a female perception benefit was less pervasive in the older than the younger group. Together, these findings suggest that the role of age for emotion perception is multi-faceted. It is linked to emotional and cognitive change, to processing biases that benefit young and own-age expressions, and to the different aptitudes of women and men.

Babies in traffic: Infant vocalizations and listener sex modulate auditory motion perception.

Infant vocalizations and "looming sounds" are classes of environmental stimuli that are critically important to survival but can have dramatically different emotional valences. Here, we simultaneously presented listeners with a stationary infant vocalization and a 3D virtual looming tone for which listeners made auditory time-to-arrival judgments. Negatively valenced infant cries produced more cautious (anticipatory) estimates of auditory arrival time of the tone over a no-vocalization control. Positively valenced laughs had the opposite effect, and across all conditions, men showed smaller anticipatory biases than women. In Experiment 2, vocalization-matched vocoded noise stimuli did not influence concurrent auditory time-to-arrival estimates compared with a control condition. In Experiment 3, listeners estimated the egocentric distance of a looming tone that stopped before arriving. For distant stopping points, women estimated the stopping point as closer when the tone was presented with an infant cry than when it was presented with a laugh. For near stopping points, women showed no differential effect of vocalization type. Men did not show differential effects of vocalization type at either distance. Our results support the idea that both the sex of the listener and the emotional valence of infant vocalizations can influence auditory motion perception and can modulate motor responses to other behaviorally relevant environmental sounds. We also find support for previous work that shows sex differences in emotion processing are diminished under conditions of higher stress.

Supplemental Material for Babies in Traffic: Infant Vocalizations and Listener Sex Modulate Auditory Motion Perception

Supplemental Material for Babies in Traffic: Infant Vocalizations and Listener Sex Modulate Auditory Motion Perception

Valence-specific laterality effects in vocal emotion: Interactions with stimulus type, blocking and sex

Valence-specific laterality effects have been frequently obtained in facial emotion perception but not in vocal emotion perception. We report a dichotic listening study further examining whether valence-specific laterality effects generalise to vocal emotions. Based on previous literature, we tested whether valence-specific laterality effects were dependent on blocked presentation of the emotion conditions, on the naturalness of the emotional stimuli, or on listener sex. We presented happy and sad sentences, paired with neutral counterparts, dichotically in an emotion localisation task, with vocal stimuli being preceded by verbal labels indicating target emotions. The measure was accuracy. When stimuli of the same emotion were presented as a block, a valence-specific laterality effect was demonstrated, but only in original stimuli and not morphed stimuli. There was a separate interaction with listener sex. We interpret our findings as suggesting that the valence-specific laterality hypothesis is supported only in certain circumstances. We discuss modulating factors, and we consider whether the mechanisms underlying those factors may be attentional or experiential in nature.

Effects of Gaze and Speech Rate on Receivers' Evaluations of Persuasive Speech

This study examined how gaze and speech rate affect perceptions of a speaker. Participants viewed a video recording of one of four persuasive messages delivered by a female speaker. Analysis of speech rate, gaze, and listener's sex revealed that when combined with a small amount of gaze, slow speech rate decreased trustworthiness as compared to a fast speech rate. For women, slow speech rate was thought to be indicative of less expertise as compared to a fast speech rate, again when combined with low gaze. There were no significant interactions, but there were main effects of gaze and speech rate on persuasiveness. High levels of gaze and slow speech rate each enhanced perceptions of the speaker's persuasiveness.

Effects of Talker Sex and Voice Style of Verbal Cockpit Warnings on Performance

The effects of talker sex and voice style of verbal cockpit warnings on performance were investigated to help make warning messages distinct from speech on the flight deck. Auditory warnings are used in aircraft to alert the crew to hazards and their associated levels of danger. Failing to comply with a warning has led to aviation incidents and accidents. Participants were required to monitor the auditory channel and identify the verbal warning while simultaneously performing a visual pursuit tracking task. A male and a female actor annunciated the warning words in three styles: monotone, urgent, and whisper. In Experiment 1, warning words were presented in quiet, and in Experiment 2, they were presented in a background of speech babble that simulated cockpit radio communication. Experiment 1 showed that the monotone and urgent styles resulted in the fastest identification response time (RT) regardless of the talker and listener's sex. Experiment 2 showed that the male talker annunciating in either the monotone or the urgent style resulted in the largest proportion correct and fastest identification RT regardless of the listener's sex. Both experiments showed effects of word semantics on performance. Effective use of speech parameters and word semantics can increase the saliency of verbal cockpit warnings. Potential applications of this research include improving the attention-getting capability of an alerting system, which could lead to increased warning compliance, potentially resulting in fewer incidents and accidents.

Effect of Vocal Vibrato and Performer's Sex on Children's Music Preference

This study measured the effect of low and high levels of vocal vibrato, employed by male and female performers, on the self-reported music listening preferences of upper elementary school children. A listening test was administered to 127 children from grades 4, 5, and 6 drawn from five classrooms in Lansing, Michigan. Test reliability was evaluated in terms of stability across time and internal consistency, and student behavior was observed during the test as an additional check on the validity of results. Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks tests disclosed a significant preference for low levels of vibrato and for male singers, expressed by both sexes. Both male and female listeners associated “strong” performances with male rather than female performers. The preference for low levels of vibrato and male singers was weaker in the case of female listeners, indicating an interaction between listener sex and the vocal vibrato and performer sex variables.

The effect of phonetic complexity on speaker race and sex identifications

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect of phonetic complexity on speaker race and sex identifications. A total of 20 speakers, 10 white (five males and five females) and 10 black (five males and five females), recorded four kinds of auditory stimuli, representing four levels of phonetic complexity: (1) four isolated vowels (/i/, /u/, /æ/, and /α/); (2) four monosyllabic words ( light, rain, base, and side ); (3) four bisyllabic words ( sunlight, rainbow, baseball, and sidewalk ); and (4) four sentences ( the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, the rainbow is a division of white light, he caught the baseball, and that sidewalk is broken ). A total of four master tapes were constructed, one for each kind of auditory stimulus. Twenty judges, 10 females and 10 males, participated in four listening sessions, one for each of the four master tapes. In each session they were asked to judge the race and sex of the speaker of each auditory stimulus as well as the confidence of each decision on a seven-point confidence rating scale. Results of their judgments indicate the following: (1) phonetic complexity had a significant effect on speaker race identifications, as evidenced by a progressive increase in listener accuracy from the simplest to the most complex auditory stimuli; (2) phonetic complexity did not appear to play a major role in speaker sex identifications, as evidenced by the lack of a regular trend in listener accuracy from simple to complex stimuli; (3) listener accuracy for sex judgments was always considerably greater than for race judgments at each of the four levels of phonetic complexity investigated; and (4) for each of the four kinds of auditory stimuli, listener accuracy for both race and sex judgments was better than that expected by chance guessing. Discussion of additional findings, including race and sex identifications based on differences in listener sex, speaker race and sex, and specific stimuli, as well as implications of these findings, are presented.

Effects of obscene language upon three dimensions of listener attitude

Male and female university students and non‐students heard audiotapes containing a combination of two antagonistic persuasive speeches on the energy crisis: one with 12 obscene phrases, one with 12 parallel, non‐obscene phrases; one by a male speaker, one by a female; one pro‐environmentalists, one pro‐oil companies. Listener attitude was assessed on three dimensions using the Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale. Analyses indicated that speakers were rated lower on Socio‐Intellectual Status and Aesthetic Quality when they used obscene language than when they did not; however, no difference was found on Dynamism. Other findings regarding speaker sex, listener group, and listener sex are discussed.

SEX EFFECTS IN CONVERSATIONAL INTERACTION: ANOTHER LOOK AT MALE DOMINANCE

The present study represents a contemporary test of traditional assumptions about sex effects in social interaction. An experiment was conducted to assess the independent and interactive effects of communicator sex, listener sex, and interpersonal distance on temporal measures of conversational interaction. Results demonstrated that the average duration of speech acts was significantly longer for females than for males; that communicators, regardless of sex, speak for a greater proportion of the total conversation when the listener is female as opposed to male; and that within the sex-same male dyads, far interpersonal distance is associated with significantly greater simultaneous speech when compared to the near condition. Results are interpreted as refutation for traditional notions of male dominance.

Comprehension of Spoken Language by Normal Children as a Function of Speaking Rate, Sentence Difficulty, and Listener Age and Sex

NELSON, NICKOLA W. Comprehension of Spoken Language by Normal Children as a Function of Speaking Rate, Sentence Difficulty, and Listener Age and Sex. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 299-303. Sentence comprehension was measured for 360 normal children between the ages of 5-6 and 9-6 with a picture identification task. 4 matched groups of 8 sentence types representing 2 difficulty levels were presented via tape recordings at 4 electromechanically altered speaking rates. Results indicate that comprehension of spoken language was facilitated by increased age, reduced sentence difficulty, and reduced speaking rate. Interactions of age with sex, age with sentence difficulty, and rate with both difficulty and age also occurred. Possible changes in language processing skills with age are discussed.

Comprehension of Spoken Language by Normal Children as a Function of Speaking Rate, Sentence Difficulty, and Listener Age and Sex

Comprehension of Spoken Language by Normal Children as a Function of Speaking Rate, Sentence Difficulty, and Listener Age and Sex

Individual differences and the meanings of vocal emotional expressions.

This study was an examination of the relationships among self-concept, sex, and the connotative valence of vocal emotional expressions. Seventyeight Ss were assigned to one of three groups on the basis of self-concept scores. Six emotional expressions were rated using semantic differential scales with highest loadings on a General Evaluation factor. A 3X2X6X2 factorial design was used, and data were analyzed by a fixed effects analysis of variance procedure. Results revealed main effect differences in the meanings of the six emotions, which were confounded by interactions for both speaker and listener sex. Ss having low self-concept did not distort the emotional meaning as predicted.

Research in slow‐played speech: Listener training, consonant errors, and sex and age differences in speaker intelligibility

The experiment was designed to discover how intelligible speech distorted by slow play‐back can be made. A significantly greater improvement was shown by experimental subjects who received training than by control subjects who received no training. Under conditions of slow play‐back, children were most intelligible, women ranked next in intelligibility, and men were least intelligible.