scholarly journals Good vibrations: A review of vocal expressions of positive emotions

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roza G. Kamiloğlu ◽  
Agneta H. Fischer ◽  
Disa A. Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Nonverbal Vocalizations ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Vocal Expressions

AbstractResearchers examining nonverbal communication of emotions are becoming increasingly interested in differentiations between different positive emotional states like interest, relief, and pride. But despite the importance of the voice in communicating emotion in general and positive emotion in particular, there is to date no systematic review of what characterizes vocal expressions of different positive emotions. Furthermore, integration and synthesis of current findings are lacking. In this review, we comprehensively review studies (N = 108) investigating acoustic features relating to specific positive emotions in speech prosody and nonverbal vocalizations. We find that happy voices are generally loud with considerable variability in loudness, have high and variable pitch, and are high in the first two formant frequencies. When specific positive emotions are directly compared with each other, pitch mean, loudness mean, and speech rate differ across positive emotions, with patterns mapping onto clusters of emotions, so-called emotion families. For instance, pitch is higher for epistemological emotions (amusement, interest, relief), moderate for savouring emotions (contentment and pleasure), and lower for a prosocial emotion (admiration). Some, but not all, of the differences in acoustic patterns also map on to differences in arousal levels. We end by pointing to limitations in extant work and making concrete proposals for future research on positive emotions in the voice.

scholarly journals Good Vibrations: A Review of Vocal Expressions of Positive Emotions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roza Gizem Kamiloglu ◽  
Agneta Fischer ◽  
Disa Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
High Variability ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Vocal Expressions

Researchers examining nonverbal communication of emotions are becoming increasingly interested in differentiations between different positive emotional states like interest, relief, and pride. But despite the importance of the voice in communicating emotion in general, and positive emotion in particular, there is to date no systematic review of what characterizes vocal expressions of different positive emotions. Furthermore, integration and synthesis of current findings are lacking. In this review, we comprehensively review studies (N = 108) investigating acoustic features relating to specific positive emotions in speech prosody and nonverbal vocalisations. We find that happy voices are generally loud with high variability in loudness, have high and variable pitch, and are high in the first two formant frequencies. When specific positive emotions are directly compared with each other, pitch mean, loudness mean, and speech rate differ across positive emotions, with patterns mapping onto clusters of emotions, so-called emotion families. For instance, pitch is higher for epistemological emotions (amusement, interest, relief), moderate for savouring emotions (contentment and pleasure), and lower for prosocial emotion (admiration). Some, but not all, of the differences in acoustic patterns also map on to differences in arousal levels. We end by pointing to limitations in extant work and making concrete proposals for future research on positive emotions in the voice.

scholarly journals Superior Communication of Positive Emotions Through Nonverbal Vocalisations Compared to Speech Prosody

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roza G. Kamiloğlu ◽  
George Boateng ◽  
Alisa Balabanova ◽  
Chuting Cao ◽  
Disa A. Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Nonverbal Vocalizations ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Tone Of Voice ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Acoustic Classification ◽  
Vocal Expressions

AbstractThe human voice communicates emotion through two different types of vocalizations: nonverbal vocalizations (brief non-linguistic sounds like laughs) and speech prosody (tone of voice). Research examining recognizability of emotions from the voice has mostly focused on either nonverbal vocalizations or speech prosody, and included few categories of positive emotions. In two preregistered experiments, we compare human listeners’ (total n = 400) recognition performance for 22 positive emotions from nonverbal vocalizations (n = 880) to that from speech prosody (n = 880). The results show that listeners were more accurate in recognizing most positive emotions from nonverbal vocalizations compared to prosodic expressions. Furthermore, acoustic classification experiments with machine learning models demonstrated that positive emotions are expressed with more distinctive acoustic patterns for nonverbal vocalizations as compared to speech prosody. Overall, the results suggest that vocal expressions of positive emotions are communicated more successfully when expressed as nonverbal vocalizations compared to speech prosody.

scholarly journals Many ways to sound good: Superior decoding of positive emotions from nonverbal vocalisations compared to speech prosody

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roza Gizem Kamiloglu ◽  
George Boateng ◽  
Alisa Balabanova ◽  
Chuting Cao ◽  
Disa Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Total N ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Tone Of Voice ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Acoustic Classification ◽  
Vocal Expressions

The human voice communicates emotion through two different types of vocalisations: nonverbal vocalisations (brief non-linguistic sounds like laughs) and speech prosody (tone of voice). Research examining recognisability of emotions from the voice has mostly focused on either nonverbal vocalisations or speech prosody, and included few categories of positive emotions. In two preregistered experiments, we compare human listeners’ (total n = 400) recognition performance for 22 positive emotions from nonverbal vocalisations (n = 880) to that from speech prosody (n = 880). The results show that listeners were more accurate in recognising most positive emotions from nonverbal vocalisations compared to prosodic expressions. Furthermore, acoustic classification experiments with machine learning models demonstrated that positive emotions are expressed with more distinctive acoustic patterns for nonverbal vocalisations as compared to speech prosody. Overall, the results suggest that vocal expressions of positive emotions are more distinctive in terms of acoustic patterns when expressed as nonverbal vocalisations than as speech prosody, resulting in superior recognition of positive emotions from nonverbal vocalisations.

scholarly journals Piglets vocally express the anticipation of pseudo-social contexts in their grunts

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. S. Villain ◽  
A. Hazard ◽  
M. Danglot ◽  
C. Guérin ◽  
A. Boissy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Spectral Parameters ◽  
Emotional Context ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Temporal Features ◽  
Emotional Value ◽  
Vocal Expressions

Abstract Emotions not only arise in reaction to an event but also while anticipating it, making this context a means of accessing the emotional value of events. Before now, anticipatory studies have rarely considered whether vocalisations carry information about emotional states. We studied both the grunts of piglets and their spatial behaviour as they anticipated two (pseudo)social events known to elicit positive emotions of different intensity: arrival of familiar conspecifics and arrival of a familiar human. Piglets spatially anticipated both pseudo-social contexts, and the spectro temporal features of grunts differed according to the emotional context. Piglets produced low-frequency grunts at a higher rate when anticipating conspecifics compared to anticipating a human. Spectral noise increased when piglets expected conspecifics, whereas the duration and frequency range increased when expecting a human. When the arrival of conspecifics was delayed, the grunt duration increased, whereas when the arrival of the human was delayed, the spectral parameters were comparable to those during isolation. This shows that vocal expressions in piglets during anticipation are specific to the expected reward. Vocal expressions—both their temporal and spectral features- are thus a good way to explore the emotional state of piglets during the anticipation of challenging events.

scholarly journals Preconceptual Spectral and Temporal Cues as a Source of Meaning in Speech and Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Reybrouck ◽  
Piotr Podlipniak
Keyword(s):  
Multisensory Processing ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Speech Prosody ◽  
Temporal Cues ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice

This paper explores the importance of preconceptual meaning in speech and music, stressing the role of affective vocalizations as a common ancestral instrument in communicative interactions. Speech and music are sensory rich stimuli, both at the level of production and perception, which involve different body channels, mainly the face and the voice. However, this bimodal approach has been challenged as being too restrictive. A broader conception argues for an action-oriented embodied approach that stresses the reciprocity between multisensory processing and articulatory-motor routines. There is, however, a distinction between language and music, with the latter being largely unable to function referentially. Contrary to the centrifugal tendency of language to direct the attention of the receiver away from the text or speech proper, music is centripetal in directing the listener’s attention to the auditory material itself. Sound, therefore, can be considered as the meeting point between speech and music and the question can be raised as to the shared components between the interpretation of sound in the domain of speech and music. In order to answer these questions, this paper elaborates on the following topics: (i) The relationship between speech and music with a special focus on early vocalizations in humans and non-human primates; (ii) the transition from sound to meaning in speech and music; (iii) the role of emotion and affect in early sound processing; (iv) vocalizations and nonverbal affect burst in communicative sound comprehension; and (v) the acoustic features of affective sound with a special emphasis on temporal and spectrographic cues as parts of speech prosody and musical expressiveness.

scholarly journals Acoustic Measures of Prosody in Right-Hemisphere Damage: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Weed ◽  
Riccardo Fusaroli
Keyword(s):  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Bayesian Regression ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Right Hemisphere Damage

AbstractThe right hemisphere has often been claimed to be a locus for affective prosody, and people with right-hemisphere damage (RHD) have often been reported to show impairments in this domain. This phenomenon has been primarily investigated in terms of perception, more rarely in terms of production, and more rarely still using acoustic analysis. Our goal was to systematically review the papers reporting acoustic features of prosodic production in RHD, to identify strengths and weaknesses in this field, suggest guidelines for future research, and to support cumulative research by estimating the meta-analytic effect size of those features. We queried PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, using the following combination of search terms: (prosody OR intonation OR inflection OR intensity OR pitch OR fundamental frequency OR speech rate OR voice quality) AND (RHD OR right hemisphere) AND (stroke) AND (acoustic). Standardized mean differences were extracted from all papers meeting inclusion criteria, and aggregated effect sizes were estimated using hierarchical Bayesian regression models. Sixteen papers met our inclusion criteria. We did not find strong evidence in the literature to indicate that the prosodic productions of people with RHD is substantially different from that of NBD controls, when measured in terms of acoustic features. However, the acoustic features of productions by people with RHD did differ from those of participants with NBD and LHD in some ways, notably in F0 variation and pause duration. Prosody type (emotional vs. linguistic) had very little effect. Taken together, currently available data show only a weak effect of RHD on prosody production. However, more accurate analyses are hindered by small sample sizes, lack of detail on lesion location, and divergent measuring techniques. Cumulative open science practices are recommended to overcome these issues.

Positive Emotion-Based Impulsivity as a Transdiagnostic Endophenotype

2019 ◽  
pp. 196-222
Author(s):  
Miji Um ◽  
Melissa A. Cyders
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Risky Behaviors ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Clinical Samples ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Clinical Disorders

Positive emotion-based impulsivity (i.e., positive urgency) is an important impulsivity-related trait associated with a wide range of problematic behaviors and clinical disorders, including substance use, alcohol dependence, pathological gambling, risky sexual behaviors, and non-suicidal self-injurious behaviors, among others. Since its identification in 2007, research has begun to better appreciate how positive emotions bias decision-making and can lead to many of the same negative outcomes that for years were primarily believed to be connected with negative emotional states. However, much still remains to be uncovered about positive urgency, including (a) how best to assess such tendencies without the limitations of self-report biases, (b) how positive urgency imparts risk in specific clinical samples, (c) which mechanisms underlie how positive urgency imparts risk, and (d) how best to intervene on or prevent positive emotion–based risky behaviors. This chapter reviews the accumulating empirical evidence for positive urgency, presents potential mechanisms for how it might affect risk-taking and clinical problems, and discusses many limitations in the current understanding that have thus far made it difficult to identify, prevent, and intervene on this tendency. There are, of course, adaptive and maladaptive features to positive emotions. The extent to which these positive emotions increase risk-taking, however, is an endophenotypic marker of mental health risk across a range of clinical disorders. Better understanding of mechanisms underlying this tendency will lead to identification of novel treatment and prevention targets with broad clinical applicability.

Emotional complexity across the life story: Diminished positive emodiversity and elevated negative emodiversity in sufferers of chronic depression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliza Werner-Seidler ◽  
Caitlin Hitchcock ◽  
Emily Hammond ◽  
Emma Travers-Hill ◽  
Ann-Marie Golden ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Prolonged Exposure ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Clinical Depression ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Treatment Resistant ◽  
The Relationship

Greater diversity in the experience of negative and positive emotion – emodiversity - is associated with better mental health outcomes in the general population (Quoidbach et al. 2014). However, conceptual accounts of clinical depression suggest that extensive and prolonged exposure to negative emotional states might actually be reflected in enhanced diversity across negative emotion experiences. Conversely, the opportunity to experience a myriad of varied positive emotions is likely to be reduced in depression, given existing deficits in positive affective experience associated with the disorder. In this study, the diversity of negative and positive emotion experiences in a treatment-resistant chronically depressed sample and a never-depressed control group were compared. We hypothesized that depressed individuals (n=22) would show enhanced emodiversity in the negative emotion domain but reduced emodiversity in the positive domain, relative to the control group (n=20). Results supported these hypotheses. Analyses also showed that among those with depression, reduced positive emodiversity was associated with disorder chronicity, such that both length of time depressed and frequency of past episodes were linked to reduced positive emodiversity. No support was found for an association between negative emotion diversity and depression chronicity. This study provides the first investigation into the relationship between clinical depression and emodiversity, and suggests that supporting depressed individuals to experience a range of diverse positive emotions could be a valuable therapeutic target.

scholarly journals Posed and spontaneous nonverbal vocalizations of positive emotions: Acoustic analysis and perceptual judgments

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roza Gizem Kamiloglu ◽  
Disa Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Acoustic Structure ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
Nonverbal Vocalizations ◽  
Being Moved ◽  
Better Than

When experiencing different positive emotional states, like amusement or relief, we may produce nonverbal vocalizations such as laughs and sighs. In the current study, we describe the acoustic structure of posed and spontaneous nonverbal vocalizations of 14 different positive emotions, and test whether listeners (N = 201) map the vocalizations to emotions. The results show that vocalizations of 13 different positive emotions were recognized at better-than-chance levels, but not vocalizations of being moved. Emotions varied in whether vocalizations were better recognized from spontaneous or posed expressions.

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