Vocal Expressions Research Articles

The power of empathy: the dual impacts of an emotional voice in organizational crisis communication

ABSTRACT This study examines how sadness, expressed through the voice of a CEO of an organization in crisis, affects the public's perceptions in times of crisis. A first experiment shows that a sad voice increases the public's empathy toward the CEO, which results in positive attitudes toward the organization. However, at the same time, that sad voice results in negative attitudes toward the organization because it makes the CEO appear less powerful. A second experiment examined if the impact of an emotional voice depends on the crisis stage. The negative effect of vocal emotions due to reduced perceptions of powerfulness only occurs during the trigger event of the crisis. The positive effect of vocal expressions of sadness through increased empathy occurs throughout all stages of the crisis life cycle. These findings indicate that organizational spokespersons should not be afraid to express genuine emotions in their voices in times of crisis.

Bathing routines in different infant placement settings: an ethological study

ABSTRACT This study used an ethological approach to explore the behavioural adaptation of nineteen infants during their first six weeks in Residential Care (RC), or a Foster Family (FF) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC). Direct observations were conducted once a week at bath time. Observed behaviours were: sleep-wake states, visual exploration, motor activity, facial and vocal expressions. Non-parametric analyses showed that, in RC, the duration of bathing was the shortest and babies expressed more crying and withdrawal and less locomotor abilities and vocalizations. By contrast, in IMC, the bathing time was the longest and babies spent the least time in crying and showed the most locomotor abilities and vocalizations. The placement in FF showed intermediate results. This study showed sleep-wake states and behaviours that found variable expression depending on the placement environment and therefore could be considered as markers of the baby’s adaptation to his placement milieu in follow-up quantitative studies.

The phenomenon of the singing style of J. Kaufmann: theoretical aspect

The phenomenon of the singing style of J. Kaufmann: theoretical aspect

Microstimulation in Different Parts of the Periaqueductal Gray Generates Different Types of Vocalizations in the Cat

In the cat four different types of vocalization, mews, howls, cries, and hisses were generated by microstimulation in different parts of the periaqueductal gray (PAG). While mews imply positive vocal expressions, howls, hisses, and cries represent negative vocal expressions. In the intermediate PAG, mews were generated in the lateral column, howls, and hisses in the ventrolateral column. Cries were generated in two other regions, the lateral column of the rostral PAG and the ventrolateral column of the caudal PAG. In order to define the specific motor patterns of the mews, howls, and cries, the following muscles were recorded during these vocalizations; larynx (cricothyroid, thyroarytenoid, and posterior cricoarytenoid), tongue (genioglossus), jaw (digastric), and respiration muscles (diaphragm, internal intercostal, external, and internal abdominal oblique). During these mews, howls, and cries we analyzed the frequency, intensity, activation cascades power density, turns, and amplitude analysis of the electromyograms (EMGs). It appeared that each type of vocalization consists of a specific circumscribed motor coordination. The nucleus retroambiguus (NRA) in the caudal medulla is known to serve as the final premotor interneuronal output system for vocalization. Although neurochemical microstimulation in the NRA itself also generated vocalizations, they only consisted of guttural sounds, the EMGs of which involved only small parts of the EMGs of the mews, howls, and cries generated by neurochemical stimulation in the PAG. These results demonstrate that positive and negative vocalizations are generated in different parts of the PAG. These parts have access to different groups of premotoneurons in the NRA, that, in turn, have access to different groups of motoneurons in the brainstem and spinal cord, resulting in different vocalizations. The findings would serve a valuable model for diagnostic assessment of voice disorders in humans.

Expanding Simulation Models of Emotional Understanding: The Case for Different Modalities, Body-State Simulation Prominence, and Developmental Trajectories.

Recent models of emotion recognition suggest that when people perceive an emotional expression, they partially activate the respective emotion in themselves, providing a basis for the recognition of that emotion. Much of the focus of these models and of their evidential basis has been on sensorimotor simulation as a basis for facial expression recognition – the idea, in short, that coming to know what another feels involves simulating in your brain the motor plans and associated sensory representations engaged by the other person’s brain in producing the facial expression that you see. In this review article, we argue that simulation accounts of emotion recognition would benefit from three key extensions. First, that fuller consideration be given to simulation of bodily and vocal expressions, given that the body and voice are also important expressive channels for providing cues to another’s emotional state. Second, that simulation of other aspects of the perceived emotional state, such as changes in the autonomic nervous system and viscera, might have a more prominent role in underpinning emotion recognition than is typically proposed. Sensorimotor simulation models tend to relegate such body-state simulation to a subsidiary role, despite the plausibility of body-state simulation being able to underpin emotion recognition in the absence of typical sensorimotor simulation. Third, that simulation models of emotion recognition be extended to address how embodied processes and emotion recognition abilities develop through the lifespan. It is not currently clear how this system of sensorimotor and body-state simulation develops and in particular how this affects the development of emotion recognition ability. We review recent findings from the emotional body recognition literature and integrate recent evidence regarding the development of mimicry and interoception to significantly expand simulation models of emotion recognition.

Encountering the Shadow

The interacting unconscious in the contact between therapist and client, the (self) sabotage and destructiveness observed as resistance in the contact to oneself and to others, is explained conceptually and illustrated with case studies. Therapeutic techniques will be presented which allow a creative and energizing, vocally expressive handling of the hostility bound up in the introject, in which the patient «embraces” their own shadow. The bases for the practical work are the well-known concepts and interventions of Bioenergetic Analysis, and this perspective is extended by reference to the anatomical-functional and the neurovegetative contexts of vocal expression. The tongue is of particular importance as it is a universal organ of expression for rejection, contempt, aversion as well as for desire. The familiar and the new are placed within a specific therapeutic framework.

Ability emotional intelligence: What about recognition of emotion in voices?

Interpersonal emotion recognition requires the integration of nonverbal cues across a number of modalities (e.g., face/voice), but the ‘gold-standard’ measure of ability emotional intelligence (AEI) in youth (MSCEIT-YVR) is limited to assessment of facial emotion recognition. Using indices from signal detection theory, the current study examined whether scores on the MSCEIT-YV were associated with accuracy and response thresholds for recognizing vocally expressed anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness. Data from 122 adolescents (57.38% female) ages 11–18 years (M = 15.39) showed that young people who scored high on the MSCEIT-YV were no more accurate in recognizing vocal emotions, raising questions about whether the measure needs to be re-designed to include emotion recognition across modalities. Those scoring high on certain subscales of the MSCEIT-YV were less likely to choose anger as a response label, suggesting vocal expression recognition is linked to more complex emotion perception abilities. Findings are interpreted with reference to the influence of social context and early cognitive processing of vocalizations, with a recommendation that researchers revisit the specific skills that comprise emotion recognition in AEI measurement tools.

Ultrasonic signals associated with different types of social behavior of mice.

Communication plays an integral role in human social dynamics and is impaired in several neurodevelopmental disorders. Mice are used to study the neurobiology of social behavior; however, the extent to which mouse vocalizations influence social dynamics has remained elusive because it is difficult to identify the vocalizing animal among mice involved in a group interaction. By tracking the ultrasonic vocal behavior of individual mice and using an algorithm developed to group phonically similar signals, we show that distinct patterns of vocalization emerge as male mice perform specific social actions. Mice dominating other mice were more likely to emit different vocal signals than mice avoiding social interactions. Furthermore, we show that the patterns of vocal expression influence the behavior of the socially-engaged partner but no other animals in the cage. These findings clarify the function of mouse communication by revealing a communicative ultrasonic signaling repertoire.

Cross-Cultural Emotion Recognition and In-Group Advantage in Vocal Expression: A Meta-Analysis

Most research on cross-cultural emotion recognition has focused on facial expressions. To integrate the body of evidence on vocal expression, we present a meta-analysis of 37 cross-cultural studies of emotion recognition from speech prosody and nonlinguistic vocalizations, including expressers from 26 cultural groups and perceivers from 44 different cultures. Results showed that a wide variety of positive and negative emotions could be recognized with above-chance accuracy in cross-cultural conditions. However, there was also evidence for in-group advantage with higher accuracy in within- versus cross-cultural conditions. The distance between expresser and perceiver culture, measured via Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, was negatively correlated with recognition accuracy and positively correlated with in-group advantage. Results are discussed in relation to the dialect theory of emotion.

Vocal emotion expressions in infant‐directed singing: The impact of war trauma and maternal mental health and the consequences on infant development

AbstractMaternal singing is considered vital to infant well‐being. This study focuses on vocal emotion expressions in infant‐directed singing among mothers in war conditions. It examines the questions: (a) how traumatic war events and mental health problems are associated with the content and valence of vocal emotion expressions and (b) how these emotion expressions are associated with infant development. The vocal material consists of songs sung by 50 Palestinian mothers who participated at delivery (T1) as well as when their infants were 6 (T2) and 18 (T3) months of age. These mothers reported traumatic war events (T1); depressive and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (T2–T3); and infants' emotional, sensorimotor, and cognitive development (T2–T3). Student judges evaluated the valence and content of vocal emotion expressions in maternal infant‐directed singing (playfulness‐vivacity, fear, joy, sadness, love‐tenderness, anger, and tension). Severe traumatic war events and depressive symptoms were associated with low positive and high negative vocal emotion expressions. High levels of playfulness and joy, as well as low levels of fear and tension, were associated with infant positive affectivity, while low levels of fear, anger, and tension were associated with advanced infant language skills. Discussion focuses on the vocal markers of maternal mental health and infant development.Highlights How are maternal war trauma and mental health problems (symptoms of depression and post‐traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) associated with the valence and content of mothers' vocal emotion expressions when they sing to their infants? How are the maternal vocal emotion expressions associated with infant emotional and sensorimotor development? Methodologically, the study involved cultural in‐ and out‐group judges to evaluate maternal vocal emotion expressions. The vocal material consisted of song excerpts of 50 Palestinian women from the Gaza strip, which is sung in Arabic. War trauma was photodocumented; mothers reported their symptoms of depression and PTSD; and infant emotion development by the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ), sensorimotor development, is based on the Bayley test. Maternal vocal emotion expression in infant‐directed singing can provide a marker for her mental health in transition to parenthood. Further, valence and content of infant‐directed singing are vital for infant emotional and sensorimotor development.

Types of fear, ethics and aesthetics of terror, and the politics of emotions in The Album of Female Prisoners by Milutin A. Popovic

Eventhough the number of neurosience studies has grown from the late 20th century, the topic of fear in Serbian literature of the second half of the 19th century has rarely been separately researched. For this analisys, the author has chosen an unusual book in which, unlikely to Serbian novels of the time, fear was often described. It is the first book of the stories about Serbian female convicts of the 19th century The Album of the Women?s Ward of Prison in Pozarevac with Statistics (1898) by Milutin A. Popovic. Contrary to some Serbian, Swedish (1861) and American (1886) albuma of the time, Popovic narrated crimes and sometimes wrote confessions derived directly from the female prisoners. The purpose of this paper is to analyse fear, conditioned by time and space, its vocal, facial and body expressions, as well as personal reactions. In this interdisciplanary research the author has integrated perspectives and methods from the Theory of Literature and Affective Narratology, Comparative Literature, History of Serbian Society and Literature, Psychology, Political Psychology, Philosophy and to some extent Linguistics (Cognitive Semantics). It is argued that the author's insistence on truth was the part of terrorethics, of causing fear and shock. It establishes the triumph of truth without beautifying, calling for sensibility, compassion and responsibility, in order to improve society. The results of the investigation show that in Album fear is presented as a complex emotion. It appears as an act of defense, but also as a form of manipulation. Fear is often connected to women and it turned to courage. The fear of death and the fear of a dead human body are the most frequently described fears. The author also described gender-specific fear of pregnancy, abortion, and rape. The Album breaks stereotypes of the past Serbian society and reveals different cases of women?s political resistance and sexual freedom. In the Album, fear is rarely vocally expressed, rather it manifests through different bodily symptoms, their intensity and spectrum. In describing one of the cruelest crimes, the author included humor as a mean of defense and fear control. Emotional geography reveals a paradox: a home is a place of terror and life threat, while a prison emerges as an area of joy and security. Moreover, the book describes two key generators of the politics of emotions. One is made by the systematic violence of a patriarcharchal society toward women, and the other one by inadequate institutions which ignore serious social problems. The language of fear, shock, horror, provocation and perversion and the aesthetics of the genre is interpreted as a part of the author's efforts for readers to feel terror of psycho-physiological mechanisms of pain, and to make new connections with the society and its culture. The creation of a complex and multimedia genre of the album is in accordance with the author's multuple efforts to deconstruct the layers of real life and its different dangers, calling for counteractions, and showing the tragic link between inhumane and unordered society.

Artificial Neural Network based Emotion Classification and Recognition from Speech

Emotion recognition from speech signals is still a challenging task. Hence, proposing an efficient and accurate technique for speech-based emotion recognition is also an important task. This study is focused on four basic human emotions (sad, angry, happy, and normal) recognition using an artificial neural network that can be detected through vocal expressions resulting in more efficient and productive machine behaviors. An effective model based on a Bayesian regularized artificial neural network (BRANN) is proposed in this study for speech-based emotion recognition. The experiments are conducted on a well-known Berlin database having 1470 speech samples carrying basic emotions with 500 samples of angry emotions, 300 samples of happy emotions, 350 samples of a neutral state, and 320 samples of sad emotions. The four features Frequency, Pitch, Amplitude, and formant of speech is used to recognize four basic emotions from speech. The performance of the proposed methodology is compared with the performance of state-of-the-art methodologies used for emotion recognition from speech. The proposed methodology achieved 95% accuracy of emotion recognition which is highest as compared to other states of the art techniques in the relevant domain.

Тембр-амплуа як інструмент вираження оперного «голосообразу» (на прикладі драматичного тенора)

Research objective is to provide an analysis of the category of timbre-role in opera, to substantiate timbre-role as a tool for the stage expression of a certain “voice” in the genre of opera. The methodology: psychological and musicological analysis of features of genre communication, immanent creative process and technological vocal specificity of dramatic tenor is the methodological basis and instrument of research; a comparative analysis of the specifics of the creative process of the birth of a stage image in an opera performer and a dramatic actor has been applied for the realization of the tasks of the research. The scientific novelty – for the first time the importance of timbre-role of a certain type of voice as a communicative, psychological and technological instrument in the realization of artistic tasks of the general thesaurus of opera performance is substantiated. Conclusions. Singer’s voice timbre is a way of individualizing and personalizing a vocalstage image, that is, a semantic image is born through an appropriate type of voice. Therefore, the typology of the role of opera in opera is based on the principles of expressiveness and naturalness of voices, which is an indirect embodiment in the vocal art of the principles of the K.S. Stanislavsky realistic theater – the veracity of the stage image in the opera is determined first of all by the correspondence of the performer timbre-role and intonational semantics of the material. Timbre-role – a type of voice that is able to fully express the semantic character of the opera character in the vocal reflection. The timbre-role determines the vocal expression of the character of the hero; the way of his artistic thinking; features of communication with the viewer; is an embodiment of the technological features of a particular type of voice. The timbre-role of the “dramatic tenor” is a type of voice capable of fully expressing the intonational semantics of the semantic image of the hero, who is the center of the dramatic conflict of opera.

Zvučna semantika u savremenoj svadbenoj procesualnosti Srba u Gračanici

This paper is based on a field research of musical and folkloric materials of the Serbian population in the central part of Kosovo and Metohija, which was conducted in the period from 2015 to 2017 by the authors. During the specified time period, the authors recorded extensive collection of materials dominated by various forms of vocal expressions, and a special place is given to the wedding songs which are part of various ritual activities present in the current practice of the area. It is a part of the testimony of folk verbal and musical statements, and especially the participatory observation of the wedding ceremony that we attended in Gracanica, on September 6, 2015. Focusing on our participation in the wedding ritual in Gracanica, as a sort of paradigmatic form of this process in a wider (specified) territory, we point to the specific sustainability of traditional wedding practice, through consideration of actional, temporal, locative, personal and musical-poetic systems, in diachronic and the synchronous plane. Special attention is given to the musical component of the wedding ceremony, as well as the analysis of songs which usually function as a musical time frame of the wedding ritual. Perceiving musical characteristics of the songs through the analysis of melodies, tonal sequences, meters and other features will enable perception of the characteristics of the genre itself. Nevertheless, locating musical texts in a certain time and space enhances the importance of singing performances within the entire ritual complex.

INTERACTION ANALYSIS OVER SPEECH FOR CALL CENTRE

Customer Service Center is the second most important consideration just after the actual product. Also, customer service is one of the biggest contributors to the cost component for any firm. We aim to apply well-known data mining techniques to the problem of predicting the quality of interactions like those done in call centers and the problem of predicting the quality of service. The analysis of call center conversations will provide useful insights for enhancing Call Center Analytics to a level that will enable new metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) beyond the standard approach. These metrics rely on understanding the dynamics of conversations by highlighting the way participants discuss topics. The main focus will be to reduce the average handling time, is a call center metric for the average duration of one transaction, typically measured from the customer’s initiation of the call and including any hold time, talk time and related tasks that follow the transaction. Get real-time solution. The main operations will be speaker diarization, speech to text, agent analysis, emotion recognition and other measures to help with the analysis. We will use RAVDESS (Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song) for emotion analysis, consisting of vocal emotional expressions in sentences spoken in a range of basic emotional states (happy, sad, anger, fear, disgust, surprise and calm). Emotion recognition is done by extracting features from the audio from its Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and passing it through a convolutional neural network. All of this will happen in real time as the call is taking place.

Cross-modal processing of emotions in severe alcohol use disorders: Impaired discrimination of anger and fear under dynamic audiovisual conditions

Severe alcohol use disorders (SAUD) are associated with a large variety of affective disturbances, among which a well-established decoding deficit for facial and vocal emotional expressions. This deficit has recently been found to be increased in cross-modal settings, namely when inputs from different sensory modalities have to be combined. Compared to unimodal emotional stimuli, cross-modal ones allow for faster and more accurate emotional predictions, and therefore constitute critical cues for social interactions. However, so far, studies exploring emotional cross-modal processing in SAUD relied on static faces, associated with voices from a different individual, largely hampering ecological validity. Besides, in real life conditions, emotions are often not fully expressed, so that we have to make guesses based on incomplete information. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to assess cross-modal emotional processing using a new ecological paradigm with dynamic audiovisual stimuli, manipulating the amount of emotional information available to the individual. Thirty individuals with SAUD and 30 matched healthy controls performed an emotional discrimination task requiring to identify emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness) expressed in short movies containing visual, auditory or auditory-visual information of various durations. The shortest excerpts revealed the very early emotional sketch (i.e., initial facial movements and prosody) while the longest ones depicted a more complete emotion. Sensitivity analyses (d’) showed that discrimination levels varied across sensory modalities and emotions, and increased with stimuli duration in both groups. Individuals with SAUD's performances improved from unimodal to cross-modal conditions, but their discrimination for cross-modal stimuli was impaired for anger and fear. This deficit was not influenced by the amount of information displayed, suggesting that it persists even when more emotional information is available. Results are discussed in light of the predictive mechanisms underlying emotion recognition, and converge with earlier findings to ascribe a specific role for anger and fear in SAUD.

The verbal, vocal, and gestural expression of (in)dependency in two types of subordinate constructions

Based on a video recording of conversational British English, this paper tests within the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis whether two different subordinate structures are evenly integrated to their environment. Subordinate constructions have been described in linguistics as dependent forms elaborating on primary elements of discourse. Although their verbal characteristics have been deeply analysed, few studies have focused on the articulation of the different communicative modalities in their production or provided a qualified picture of their integration. The main hypothesis is based on the capacity of subordinate constructions to show distinct forms of autonomy depending on their syntactic type, thus expressing different degrees of break. Beyond showing that subordinate constructions are not evenly dependent on their environment depending on how speakers use the prosodic and kinetic modalities to express greater (in)dependency, the results suggest that the creation of a break mainly relies on prosodic cues. Changes in the modal configuration throughout the sequence suggest modalities are dynamic and flexible resources for integrating or demarcating subordinate constructions in function of their syntactic type.

Cross-modal emotion recognition and autism-like traits in typically developing children

The ability to explicitly recognize emotions develops gradually throughout childhood, and children usually have greater difficulty in recognizing emotions from the voice than from the face. However, little is known about how children integrate vocal and facial cues to recognize an emotion, particularly during mid to late childhood. Furthermore, children with an autism spectrum disorder often show a reduced ability to recognize emotions, especially when integrating emotion from multiple modalities. The current preliminary study explored the ability of typically developing children aged 7–9 years to match emotional tones of voice to facial expressions and whether this ability varies according to the level of autism-like traits. Overall, children were the least accurate when matching happy and fearful voices to faces, commonly pairing happy voices with angry faces and fearful voices with sad faces. However, the level of autism-like traits was not associated with matching accuracy. These results suggest that 7- to 9-year-old children have difficulty in integrating vocal and facial emotional expressions but that differences in cross-modal emotion matching in relation to the broader autism phenotype are not evident in this task for this age group with the current sample.

On the role of vocal emotions in social decision-making

Emotional expressions constitute valuable information for decision-making in social interaction contexts. However, the range of emotions that have been studied is limited. The present study addresses the effects of a wider range of emotional expressions using a methodology modeling interdependent decision-making in social contexts, the Assurance Dilemma. Joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and emotionally neutral vocal expressions were presented to 46 participants taking part in the Assurance Dilemma, obtaining behavioral and judgment data on cooperation behavior. For each emotion, predictions based on theoretical accounts and research on emotion induction in decision-making contexts were advanced; joy, sadness and fear were predicted to increase cooperation while anger and disgust to decrease it, as compared to neutral expressions. Results show that emotional expressions reliably affected cooperation, although not always according to the predictions: except for joy, all emotions decreased cooperation. Judgment measures provide further insight into the decision-making process. When collected before participants experienced feedback in the interactions, judgment measures show that participants hold a priori expectations on others’ likely behaviors depending on the emotional expression they display and are willing to use them to guide their decision-making process. This data aligns more closely with predictions. However, after experiencing outcomes, expectations are revised and converge with the behavioral patterns observed in the actual interactions. Results are discussed in terms of how emotional expressions are used for guiding expectations and taking decisions in social interaction contexts and the role that experience plays in this process. Limitations are pointed out directions for future research suggested.

Comparing Contemporary Commercial and Classical Styles: Emotion Expression in Singing

This study examines the acoustic correlates of the vocal expression of emotions in contemporary commercial music (CCM) and classical styles of singing. This information may be useful in improving the training of interpretation in singing. This is an experimental comparative study. Eleven female singers with a minimum of 3 years of professional-level singing training in CCM, classical, or both styles participated. They sang the vowel [ɑ:] at three pitches (A3 220Hz, E4 330Hz, and A4 440Hz) expressing anger, sadness, joy, tenderness, and a neutral voice. Vowel samples were analyzed for fundamental frequency (fo) formant frequencies (F1-F5), sound pressure level (SPL), spectral structure (alpha ratio = SPL 1500-5000 Hz-SPL 50-1500 Hz), harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), perturbation (jitter, shimmer), onset and offset duration, sustain time, rate and extent of fo variation in vibrato, and rate and extent of amplitude vibrato. The parameters that were statistically significantly (RM-ANOVA, P ≤ 0.05) related to emotion expression in both genres were SPL, alpha ratio, F1, and HNR. Additionally, for CCM, significance was found in sustain time, jitter, shimmer, F2, and F4. When fo and SPL were set as covariates in the variance analysis, jitter, HNR, and F4 did not show pure dependence on expression. The alpha ratio, F1, F2, shimmer apq5, amplitude vibrato rate, and sustain time of vocalizations had emotion-related variation also independent of fo and SPL in the CCM style, while these parameters were related to fo and SPL in the classical style. The results differed somewhat for the CCM and classical styles. The alpha ratio showed less variation in the classical style, most likely reflecting the demand for a more stable voice source quality. The alpha ratio, F1, F2, shimmer, amplitude vibrato rate, and the sustain time of the vocalizations were related to fo and SPL control in the classical style. The only common independent sound parameter indicating emotional expression for both styles was SPL. The CCM style offers more freedom for expression-related changes in voice quality.