Harsh is large: nonlinear vocal phenomena lower voice pitch and exaggerate body size

A lion's roar, a dog's bark, an angry yell in a pub brawl: what do these vocalizations have in common? They all sound harsh due to nonlinear vocal phenomena (NLP)—deviations from regular voice production, hypothesized to lower perceived voice pitch and thereby exaggerate the apparent body size of the vocalizer. To test this yet uncorroborated hypothesis, we synthesized human nonverbal vocalizations, such as roars, groans and screams, with and without NLP (amplitude modulation, subharmonics and chaos). We then measured their effects on nearly 700 listeners' perceptions of three psychoacoustic (pitch, timbre, roughness) and three ecological (body size, formidability, aggression) characteristics. In an explicit rating task, all NLP lowered perceived voice pitch, increased voice darkness and roughness, and caused vocalizers to sound larger, more formidable and more aggressive. Key results were replicated in an implicit associations test, suggesting that the ‘harsh is large’ bias will arise in ecologically relevant confrontational contexts that involve a rapid, and largely implicit, evaluation of the opponent's size. In sum, nonlinearities in human vocalizations can flexibly communicate both formidability and intention to attack, suggesting they are not a mere byproduct of loud vocalizing, but rather an informative acoustic signal well suited for intimidating potential opponents.

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Body Image Implicit Associations Test

PsycTESTS Dataset ◽

10.1037/t48444-000 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Ariana F. Young ◽

Shira Gabriel ◽

Olivia M. Schlager

Keyword(s):

Body Image ◽

Implicit Associations ◽

Implicit Associations Test

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Individual differences in human voice pitch are preserved from speech to screams, roars and pain cries

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.191642 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 191642 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Katarzyna Pisanski ◽

Jordan Raine ◽

David Reby

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Considerable Variability ◽

Voice Pitch ◽

Men And Women ◽

Human Voice ◽

Social Traits ◽

Nonverbal Vocalizations ◽

Acoustic Analyses ◽

Socially Relevant

Fundamental frequency ( F 0, perceived as voice pitch) predicts sex and age, hormonal status, mating success and a range of social traits, and thus functions as an important biosocial marker in modal speech. Yet, the role of F 0 in human nonverbal vocalizations remains unclear, and given considerable variability in F 0 across call types, it is not known whether F 0 cues to vocalizer attributes are shared across speech and nonverbal vocalizations. Here, using a corpus of vocal sounds from 51 men and women, we examined whether individual differences in F 0 are retained across neutral speech, valenced speech and nonverbal vocalizations (screams, roars and pain cries). Acoustic analyses revealed substantial variability in F 0 across vocal types, with mean F 0 increasing as much as 10-fold in screams compared to speech in the same individual. Despite these extreme pitch differences, sexual dimorphism was preserved within call types and, critically, inter-individual differences in F 0 correlated across vocal types ( r = 0.36–0.80) with stronger relationships between vocal types of the same valence (e.g. 38% of the variance in roar F 0 was predicted by aggressive speech F 0). Our results indicate that biologically and socially relevant indexical cues in the human voice are preserved in simulated valenced speech and vocalizations, including vocalizations characterized by extreme F 0 modulation, suggesting that voice pitch may function as a reliable individual and biosocial marker across disparate communication contexts.

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"Smooth" Rhythms as Probes of Entrainment

Music Perception An Interdisciplinary Journal ◽

10.2307/40285585 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 10 (4) ◽

pp. 503-508 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Robert O. Gjerdingen

Keyword(s):

Frequency Domain ◽

Amplitude Modulation ◽

Acoustic Signal ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Digital Filtering ◽

Acoustic Signals ◽

Frequency Range ◽

Carrier Wave ◽

The Brain

If one hypothesizes rhythmic perception as a process employing oscillatory circuits in the brain that entrain to low-frequency periodicities in the neural firings evoked by an acoustic signal, then among the conceptually purest probes of those oscillatory circuits would be acoustic signals with only simple sinusoidal periodicities in the appropriate frequency range (perhaps from 0.3 Hz to 20 Hz). Such signals can be produced by the low- frequency amplitude modulation of an audible carrier wave by one or more sinusoids. The resulting rhythms are "smooth" in that their amplitude envelopes are smoothly varying with no obvious points of onset or offset. Because preliminary experiments with smooth rhythms have produced some unexpected results, and because smooth rhythms can be precisely controlled and varied (including, for example, the digital filtering of their Fourier components in the frequency domain), they are proposed as versatile stimuli for studies in rhythmic perception.

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The Influence of Implicit Math Anxiety on Math Achievement

Psychological Reports ◽

10.1177/0033294120964055 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 003329412096405

Author(s):

R. Shane Westfall ◽

Amy Jane McAuley ◽

Murray Millar

Keyword(s):

Math Achievement ◽

Math Anxiety ◽

Math Performance ◽

Implicit Associations ◽

Traditional Methods ◽

Implicit Associations Test ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

Modest Correlation

Previous work has noted that math anxiety may have a profound effect on math performance; however extant research has relied on measures that explicitly assess math anxiety. This study examined the effects of implicit math anxiety on the performance of a math achievement task. We hypothesized that combined measure of implicit anxiety and explicit anxiety would better predict math achievement than measures of explicit math anxiety alone. In addition, we hypothesized that an individuals’ measured implicit anxiety and measured explicit anxiety would share only a modest correlation. To test these hypotheses, 175 participants completed measures of explicit anxiety, an implicit associations test designed to measure implicit anxiety, and a measure of math achievement. As expected, math achievement was better predicted when implicit anxiety was combined with explicit anxiety. Furthermore, scores on the implicit and explicit anxiety measures were not significantly correlated. These results suggest that implicit and explicit math anxiety are two distinct constructs, thus traditional methods for helping students deal with math anxiety may not be entirely successful if the implicit component is ignored.

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