Voice Pitch Research Articles

Economic factors on the mate selection by the human face and voice

Humans are reported to be the eighth most visually sexually dimorphic primates. The visual difference between men and women can be attributed to variance in height, weight, body fat, muscle distribution, body hair, facial hair, etc. However, the most obvious difference between men and women occur in faces and voices. Now, one can raise the question, what mechanism is responsible for creating mate dimorphism? Mate selection arises due to the differential reproductive success among individuals in obtaining mates. Women tend to choose masculine- faced men who tend to have good genes so that their offspring may inherit the good genes to be able to survive and thrive in the hostile environment. The trend of men having many wives has a strong tie with economy. Men and women have vast difference in face features and voice pitch. The new trends have arrived in which women started to choose feminized men as their mates. Men started to “hide” their masculinity by trimming their beard, softening their voices, wearing tight clothes and so forth. This paper will present how the mate selection shaped on the economic factors in human faces and voices.

A lover or a fighter? Opposing sexual selection pressures on men's vocal pitch and facial hair.

The traditional assumption within the research literature on human sexually dimorphic traits has been that many sex differences have arisen from intersexual selection. More recently, however, there has been a shift toward the idea that many male features, including male lower-pitched voices and male beard growth, might have arisen predominantly through intrasexual selection: that is, to serve the purpose of male-male competition instead of mate attraction. In this study, using a unique set of video stimuli, we measured people's perceptions of the dominance and attractiveness of men who differ both in terms of voice pitch (4 levels from lower to higher pitched) and beard growth (4 levels from clean shaven to a month's hair growth). We found a nonlinear relationship between lower pitch and increased attractiveness; men's vocal attractiveness peaked at around 96 Hz. Beard growth had equivocal effects on attractiveness judgments. In contrast, perceptions of men's dominance simply increased with increasing masculinity (i.e., with lower-pitched voices and greater beard growth). Together, these results suggest that the optimal level of physical masculinity might differ depending on whether the outcome is social dominance or mate attraction. These dual selection pressures might maintain some of the documented variability in male physical and behavioral masculinity that we see today.

It’s the way he tells them (and who is listening): men’s dominance is positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by dominant-sounding men

While much research has explored humorous exchange in relation to mate choice, recent perspectives have emphasized the importance of humor for monitoring interest within social partnerships more generally. Indeed, given that similarity is thought to be important in the maintenance of social partnerships, we may expect humor appreciation to vary according to the degree of similarity between humor producers and recipients. In the current study we report evidence for such variation that is specific to men’s judgments of other men’s humor. Here we manipulated voice pitch in a set of ‘one-liner’ jokes to create low-pitched and high-pitched versions of men and women telling jokes. A composite measure of men’s own dominance was positively correlated with their preference for jokes told by other men with lowered voice pitch (a vocal cue to dominance). A follow-up study demonstrated that self-reported dominance was positively related to men’s choice of low-pitch men as friends when judging humorous audio clips but not when judging neutral control audio clips, suggesting that humor may be important in mediating the effect of dominance on friendship choice. These studies indicate systematic variation in humor appreciation related to friendship choices which may function to promote cohesion within male partnerships based on status.

The use of psychophysiological methods in the evaluation of mental commitment robots for elderly care

This study aims to conduct objective user evaluation of mental commitment robots for elderly care using psychophysiological methods, including heart rate, skin temperature, skin conductance, and eye gaze data. In stage 1, four males and five females aged from 57 to 67 years old were recruited to interact with eight robot prototypes. The purpose was to validate whether the measures are capable of differentiating the semi-elderly and elderly users’ feelings about the robots, as well as capturing a rough preference of the robot’s anthropomorphism, size, weight, voice pitch, and covering material. In stage 2, two teleoperated robots and two autonomous robots were adopted in real human–robot interaction (HRI) with six males and 10 females aged from 52 to 80 years old. The results reflect the semi-elderly and elderly users’ preference in real HRIs, which may facilitate the developers to respond to the market more closely and effectively.

The perception of vocal-tract length in cochlear implant users: Can it be improved?

When trying to understand a speaker among competing speakers, normal-hearing listeners take advantage of differences in the voices of the talkers. However, cochlear implant (CI) users do not seem to benefit from such voice differences. Roy D. Patterson's group in Cambridge has applied psychophysical methods to voice perception in order to isolate the acoustic cues that allow listeners to identify and segregate voices [e.g. Smith, Patterson, Turner, Kawahara and Irino, 2005, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 117, pp. 305–318]. In our group, we have extended these methods to CI listeners to fully characterize the limitations CI users experience in utilizing voice characteristics. More specifically, we have shown that while voice pitch (F0) is sufficiently salient through the implant to allow gender categorization, the perception of vocal-tract length (VTL) is severely degraded, leading to erroneous gender perception. With the help of acoustic simulations mimicking the CI processing, the potential factors explaining this lack of sensitivity for VTL were explored. Poor spectral resolution, spectral quantization, and spectral distortion were all found to affect VTL just-noticeable-differences. These results have yielded a number of potential solutions to improve VTL representation — and hence concurrent speech perception — in the implant.

KOMPUTEROWO WSPOMAGANA TERAPIA WYSOKOŚCI GŁOSU U UCZNIÓW Z ZABURZENIAMI MOWY

BackgroundThe aim was to measure, evaluate, and improve voice pitch characteristics (measured on the basis of the average fundamental frequency, Fx), in students aged 10–12 who had substantial or severe hearing loss and were fitted with hearing aids. Two core questions were asked: (i) Is therapy using the PCLX Laryngograph Processor effective? (ii) Which factors affect the outcome of therapy?Material and MethodsTherapy based on a multimedia computer workstation using the PCLX Laryngograph Processor is proposed, a system capable of visualizing voiced speech using electroglotography. The study is constructed as a pedagogical experiment, using parallel groups and Mill’s method of difference.ResultsPretest results show that, prior to therapy sessions, both groups (experimental and control) were largely equivalent with respect to voice pitch characteristics. In total, 49 students exhibited anomalous voice pitch characteristics while 14 cases could be described as unstable (with pitch sometimes correct, but not consistently so). Correlations between concomitant variables and the effectiveness of the therapeutic process were found. In particular, intelligence and visual-motor coordination played a significant role. Variables such as learning speed, working memory capacity, forgetfulness, time since onset of hearing loss, and degree of aural impairment seem to be less important. Improvements appeared to depend on the subject’s family environment and were largely independent of age and degree of hearing loss.ConclusionsThe research has shown that in most aurally impaired subjects voice pitch is too high and needs to be corrected. The proposed therapy is shown to be highly effective, producing persistent long-term improvements, especially in the case of younger students.

Neuromagnetic correlates of the vocal characteristics of vowels in auditory cortex

As a child grows up the formants of their vowels move down in frequency and the spacing of the harmonics that determines voice pitch decreases. Perceptually, these variables determine who listeners hear speaking (child, woman or man). In a logarithmic-frequency spectrum, the envelope with its formant peaks, moves toward the origin as a unit, without changing shape as a child grows up. Similarly, the harmonics, which constitute the fine structure of the spectrum, move toward the origin as a unit without changing shape, but at a different rate. This paper describes neuromagnetic studies which show that the generator associated with voice pitch is in Heschl's gyrus just lateral to primary auditory cortex, while the generator associated spectral envelope position is in planum temporale, some distance behind the pitch activity generator. The posterior generator is close to the location of the large N1m that typically accompanies the onset of acoustic energy of any sort. The pitch processing component of the N1...

Vote Choice, Ideology, and Social Dominance Orientation Influence Preferences for Lower Pitched Voices in Political Candidates.

Humans are equipped with a psychological system of followership that evolved to regulate choices of leaders based partly on would-be leaders' physiological features. One such feature is voice pitch, which is determined by the physiology of the throat. Recent studies find that political candidates in modern elections with lower-pitched voices are generally more successful. As lower-pitched voices are perceived as stronger and more dominant, these findings have been taken to indicate a general preference for dispositional abilities in leaders to protect and prevail in conflicts. Here we extend upon these findings by demonstrating that conservatives and Republicans tend to view the world as much more competitive and threatening than liberals and Democrats. We utilize two existing data sources to show that political candidates with lower-pitched voices are preferred more among conservative Republicans than among liberal Democrats. In a third study we show that preferences for lower-pitched candidate voices stem from individual differences in Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Importantly, across all three studies subjects' party affiliation, ideology, and SDO only predict preferences for male candidate voices. We conclude with a discussion of the results in relation to followership psychology and general debates on the rationality of the public with respect to elections.

Perceptions of Competence, Strength, and Age Influence Voters to Select Leaders with Lower-Pitched Voices.

Voters prefer leaders with lower-pitched voices because they are perceived as stronger, having greater physical prowess, more competent, and having greater integrity. An alternative hypothesis that has yet to be tested is that lower-pitched voices are perceived as older and thus wiser and more experienced. Here the relationships between candidate voice pitch, candidate age, and electoral success are examined with two experiments. Study 1 tests whether voters discriminate on candidate age. The results show that male and female candidates in their 40s and 50s, the time in the lifecycle when voice pitch is at its lowest, are preferred over candidates in their 30s, 60s, and 70s. Study 2 shows that the preference for leaders with lower-pitched voices correlates with the perception that speakers with lower voices are stronger, more competent, and older, but the influence of perception of age on vote choice is the weakest of the three.

Candidate Voice Pitch Influences Election Outcomes

A growing literature in psychology shows that human voice pitch—perceived “highness” or “lowness” as determined by the physiology of the throat—influences how speakers are perceived. This leads to the prediction that candidate voice pitch influences voters. Here this question is addressed with two studies. The first is an experiment conducted with a large national sample of U.S. adults. The results show that men and women prefer to vote for male and female candidates with lower pitched voices. The second study examines the outcomes of the 2012 U.S. House elections. When facing male opponents, candidates with lower voices won a larger vote share. However, when facing female opponents, candidates with higher voices were more successful and particularly so in the case of male candidates. In synthesizing research on the human voice and voter behavior and triangulating evidence from a controlled experiment and a large observational study of actual elections, this article illustrates that candidate voice pitch influences election outcomes.

Dominant Voices and Attractive Faces: The Contribution of Visual and Auditory Information to Integrated Person Impressions

Faces and voices, in isolation, prompt consistent social evaluations. However, most human interactions involve both seeing and talking with another person. Our main goal was to investigate how facial and vocal information are combined to reach an integrated person impression. In Study 1, we asked participants to rate faces and voices separately for perceived trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance. Most previous studies relied on stimuli in which extra-vocal information (e.g., verbal content, prosody) may have confounded voice-based effects; to prevent these unwanted influences, we used brief, neutral vowel sounds. Voices, like faces, led to the formation of highly reliable impressions. Voice trustworthiness correlated with voice attractiveness, mirroring the relation between face trustworthiness and attractiveness, but did not correlate with voice dominance. Inconsistent with the possibility that face and voice evaluations are indicative of real character traits, we found no positive correlations between judgments of trustworthiness or dominance based on faces and the same judgments based on voices (there was also no correlation between face attractiveness and voice attractiveness). In Study 2, we asked participants to evaluate male targets after seeing their faces and hearing their voices. Faces and voices contributed equally to judgments of trustworthiness and combined to produce a significant interaction effect. For attractiveness, faces were given more weight than voices, possibly due to the predominantly visual character of the attractiveness concept (there was no interaction effect). For dominance, the reverse pattern was true, with voices having a larger effect than faces on final judgments. In this case the auditory cues may be perceived to be more reliable because of the strong links between voice pitch, masculinity, and dominance.

Behavioral treatments for speech in Parkinson's disease: meta-analyses and review of the literature.

Parkinson's disease (PD) results from neurodegenerative processes leading to alteration of motor functions. Most motor symptoms respond well to pharmacological and neurosurgical treatments, except some axial symptoms such as speech impairment, so-called dysarthria. However, speech therapy is rarely proposed to PD patients. This review aims at evaluating previous research on the effects of speech behavioral therapies in patients with PD. We also performed two meta-analyses focusing on speech loudness and voice pitch. We showed that intensive therapies in PD are the most effective for hypophonia and can lead to some improvement of voice pitch. Although speech therapy is effective in handling PD dysarthria, behavioral speech rehabilitation in PD still needs further validation.

Differences in early speech patterns between Parkinson variant of multiple system atrophy and Parkinson’s disease

In Parkinson variant of multiple system atrophy (MSA-P), patterns of early speech impairment and their distinguishing features from Parkinson’s disease (PD) require further exploration. Here, we compared speech data among patients with early-stage MSA-P, PD, and healthy subjects using quantitative acoustic and perceptual analyses. Variables were analyzed for men and women in view of gender-specific features of speech. Acoustic analysis revealed that male patients with MSA-P exhibited more profound speech abnormalities than those with PD, regarding increased voice pitch, prolonged pause time, and reduced speech rate. This might be due to widespread pathology of MSA-P in nigrostriatal or extra-striatal structures related to speech production. Although several perceptual measures were mildly impaired in MSA-P and PD patients, none of these parameters showed a significant difference between patient groups. Detailed speech analysis using acoustic measures may help distinguish between MSA-P and PD early in the disease process.

Dynamics of the Duration and Frequency Characteristics of Vowels during the First Seven Years of Life in Children

One direction in studies of the ontogeny of speech con-sists of investigations of the establishment of the acousticcharacteristics of speech in children [13, 15, 23, 24, 34]. Moststudies using material from different languages haveaddressed analysis of the early vocalizations of babies [3, 14,22]. There are only occasional reports on the acoustic char-acteristics of the speech of children of preschool age [13, 15]and virtually none using Russian-speaking children [21]. Thehistorically established language specifics of articulatorypositioning do not allow data obtained using other languagesto be transferred directly to Russian.Our series of studies has addressed the establishment ofthe acoustic aspect of speech using material in Russian andcovers the period from the appearance of vowel-like sounds[3, 4] to clearly pronounced words and phrasal speech inchildren of preschool age [27, 28, 29]. However, each ofthese studies involved analysis of the acoustic characteristicsof vowels at a specified age.The selection of vowels as study material was based ontheir importance for understanding the acoustic propertiesof speech. Vowels from first in the sound repertoire of chil-dren, in adult speech. The formant frequencies of vowelsconstitute the acoustic keys for the perception of vowels andconsonants. Voice pitch and the prosodic characteristics ofspeech are also due mainly to the properties of vowels.Our previous studies involved not only analysis of theacoustic characteristics of vowels, but also aimed to describethe sound repertoire of children, the specific features of therecognition of children’s words and phrases by adults, andthe formation of phrasal stress.The aim of the present work was to follow changes inthe acoustic characteristics of vowel-like sounds from thevocalizations of babies and vowels from the words of chil-dren in the first seven years of life.

The contribution of temporal modulations to speech intelligibility: Some thoughts about the speech envelope

Rosen [Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 336, 367–373 (1992)] laid out an extremely useful framework for discussing temporal information in speech. Three broad categories were defined: temporal envelope (2–50 Hz), periodicity (50–500 Hz), and temporal fine-structure (600–10,000 Hz). The slower modulations associated with the speech envelope convey segmental cues for voicing and manner-of-articulation, and prosodic cues for syllabification and stress. These cues are manifest in the attack and fall times as well as the overall duration of the envelope segments. The mid-rate fluctuations associated with periodicity convey manner cues (periodic vs aperiodic) as well as voice pitch (an essential cue for intonation and stress). The faster rate modulations associated with temporal fine-structure (modulations within each pitch period) convey place-of-articulation cues and spectral-shape cues for manner-of-articulation and voicing. Studies that try to separate the effects of each of these temporal categories on speech perception often use signal processing strategies that filter out the temporal modulations of interest and present this information without periodicity or temporal fine-structure to listeners. The processing details of how the temporal envelope is extracted are critical to whether cues more readily associated with periodicity or fine-structure are inadvertently presented to listeners. Examples will be provided.

Functional role of delta and theta band oscillations for auditory feedback processing during vocal pitch motor control.

The answer to the question of how the brain incorporates sensory feedback and links it with motor function to achieve goal-directed movement during vocalization remains unclear. We investigated the mechanisms of voice pitch motor control by examining the spectro-temporal dynamics of EEG signals when non-musicians (NM), relative pitch (RP), and absolute pitch (AP) musicians maintained vocalizations of a vowel sound and received randomized ± 100 cents pitch-shift stimuli in their auditory feedback. We identified a phase-synchronized (evoked) fronto-central activation within the theta band (5–8 Hz) that temporally overlapped with compensatory vocal responses to pitch-shifted auditory feedback and was significantly stronger in RP and AP musicians compared with non-musicians. A second component involved a non-phase-synchronized (induced) frontal activation within the delta band (1–4 Hz) that emerged at approximately 1 s after the stimulus onset. The delta activation was significantly stronger in the NM compared with RP and AP groups and correlated with the pitch rebound error (PRE), indicating the degree to which subjects failed to re-adjust their voice pitch to baseline after the stimulus offset. We propose that the evoked theta is a neurophysiological marker of enhanced pitch processing in musicians and reflects mechanisms by which humans incorporate auditory feedback to control their voice pitch. We also suggest that the delta activation reflects adaptive neural processes by which vocal production errors are monitored and used to update the state of sensory-motor networks for driving subsequent vocal behaviors. This notion is corroborated by our findings showing that larger PREs were associated with greater delta band activity in the NM compared with RP and AP groups. These findings provide new insights into the neural mechanisms of auditory feedback processing for vocal pitch motor control.

When infants talk, infants listen: pre‐babbling infants prefer listening to speech with infant vocal properties

To learn to produce speech, infants must effectively monitor and assess their own speech output. Yet very little is known about how infants perceive speech produced by an infant, which has higher voice pitch and formant frequencies compared to adult or child speech. Here, we tested whether pre-babbling infants (at 4-6 months) prefer listening to vowel sounds with infant vocal properties over vowel sounds with adult vocal properties. A listening preference favoring infant vowels may derive from their higher voice pitch, which has been shown to attract infant attention in infant-directed speech (IDS). In addition, infants' nascent articulatory abilities may induce a bias favoring infant speech given that 4- to 6-month-olds are beginning to produce vowel sounds. We created infant and adult /i/ ('ee') vowels using a production-based synthesizer that simulates the act of speaking in talkers at different ages and then tested infants across four experiments using a sequential preferential listening task. The findings provide the first evidence that infants preferentially attend to vowel sounds with infant voice pitch and/or formants over vowel sounds with no infant-like vocal properties, supporting the view that infants' production abilities influence how they process infant speech. The findings with respect to voice pitch also reveal parallels between IDS and infant speech, raising new questions about the role of this speech register in infant development. Research exploring the underpinnings and impact of this perceptual bias can expand our understanding of infant language development.

Competence-Based Song Recommendation: Matching Songs to One’s Singing Skill

Singing is a popular social activity and a pleasant way of expressing one’s feelings. One important reason for unsuccessful singing performance is because the singer fails to choose a suitable song. In this paper, we propose a novel competence-based song recommendation framework for the purpose of singing. It is distinguished from most existing music recommendation systems which rely on the computation of listeners’ interests or similarity. We model a singer’s vocal competence as a singer profile, which takes voice pitch, intensity, and quality into consideration. Then we propose techniques to acquire singer profiles. We also present a song profile model which is used to construct a human annotated song database. Then we propose a learning-to-rank scheme for recommending songs by a singer profile. Finally, we introduce a reduced singer profile which can greatly simplify the vocal competence modelling process. The experimental study on real singers demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach and its advantages over two baseline methods.

An Evaluation of the Effect of Various Voice Qualities on Memory Retention

In the classroom environment, the main objective of teachers is to help students learn and understand certain concepts and topics given in class. The manner in which these topics are presented could affect the ability of students to retain the information discussed by their teachers. Based on a study done by Jonah E. Rockoff on the impact of individual teachers on student achievement, teacher quality does have a significant effect on test results of students[1]. Another study done by Nye, Konstantopoulos, and Hedges states that teachers accounted for about 13% of the variance in student mathematics test score gains[2]. Given that students respond differently to different professors, it would be beneficial to look into the measurable characteristics which make teachers different from each other. Since a major part of the classroom method of teaching involves teachers and professors speaking in front of their students and a lot of students depend on this to remember and recall their lessons. It is therefore necessary to know the most effective way to present the information verbally so that both the students and the teacher could achieve their goals of receiving and delivering information. This study focused on the voice characteristics of a speaker and it study aims to discover if some voice characteristics such as frequency and gender of the speaker have an effect on memory retention. A total of 120 college students were asked to listen to recordings of 50 random duo-syllabic words of one of the four different voice types. The voice types were high pitched female, low pitched female, high pitched male and low pitched male voices. The participants were made to list down as many words as possible by memory. Using analysis of variance, the average score of all respondents was 10.625 and the standard deviation was 5.483. The scores ranged from 3 to 33, and the median was 10. The p-values of the gender of the listener and the interaction of the gender of the listener with the voice type of the speaker were 0.473 and 0.291, respectively. Given a 95% level of significance, these factors have no significance. As for the voice type of the speaker, with a 0.021 p-value, it is concluded to have significance. High pitched male voice had the highest mean score of 12.5 and low pitched male voice had the lowest means score of 8.48. It was also observed that regardless of gender, both high pitched voices had higher mean scores than the low pitched voices.

Autocorrelation-Based Features for Speech Representation

This study investigates autocorrelation-based features as a potential basis for phonetic and syllabic distinctions. The work comes out of a theory of auditory signal processing based on central monaural autocorrelation and binaural crosscorrelation representations. Correlation-based features are used to predict monaural and binaural perceptual attributes that are important for the architectural acoustic design of concert halls: pitch, timbre, loudness, duration, reverberation-related coloration, sound direction, apparent source width, and envelopment (Ando, 1985, 1998; Ando and Cariani, 2009). The current study investigates the use of features of monaural autocorrelation functions (ACFs) for representing phonetic elements (vowels), syllables (CV pairs), and phrases using a small set of temporal factors extracted from the short-term running ACF. These factors include listening level (loudness), zero-lag ACF peak width (spectral tilt), τ1 (voice pitch period), φ1 (voice pitch strength), τe (effective duration of the ACF envelope, temporal repetitive continuity/contrast), segment duration, and Δφ1/Δt (the rate of pitch strength change, related to voice pitch attack-decay dynamics). Times at which ACF effective duration τe is minimal reflect rapid signal pattern changes that usefully demarcate segmental boundaries. Results suggest that vowels, CV syllables, and phrases can be distinguished on the basis of this ACF-derived feature set.