Online casinos: advertising and avoidance among Generation Y consumers in Sweden

Online casinos are one of Sweden’s largest gambling sectors. Increased advertising investment and advertising frequency have sought to attract Generation Y consumers to these casinos, yet it has been suggested that advertising can contribute to avoidance behaviours towards products and services, including online casinos and specific gambling brands. The various advertising aspects used in gambling advertising and their impact on behaviour have not been widely researched. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the use of creative strategies in casino advertising and how it contributes to the avoidance of online casinos, specifically among Swedish Generation Y consumers. As an exploratory study, qualitative methods were used. Initially, 13 casino advertisements were analysed to identify the strategies used in the advertisements. These were then presented to Generation Y consumers in three focus groups and six in-depth interviews. The analysis of the advertising shows the use of people and characters in presenting the casino brand. Male voice-overs were utilised in addition to music and other casino-related sounds. The advertising also used bright colours to attract attention. The impact of these advertisements is that the content, the auditory cues rather than just music, the emotional response, and the frequency of the advertising were found to contribute to the avoidance of casino brands. Furthermore, the ethics and general attitudes to the industry impact the decision to avoid these brands. The managerial implication of this research shows the impact of advertisements on the decision to avoid a brand, specifically a casino brand.

Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are sensitive to the correlation between pitch and timbre in human speech

The perceived pitch of human voices is highly correlated with the fundamental frequency (f0) of the laryngeal source, which is determined largely by the length and mass of the vocal folds. The vocal folds are larger in adult males than in adult females, and men’s voices consequently have a lower pitch than women’s. The length of the supralaryngeal vocal tract (vocal-tract length; VTL) affects the resonant frequencies (formants) of speech which characterize the timbre of the voice. Men’s longer vocal tracts produce lower frequency, and less dispersed, formants than women’s shorter vocal tracts. Pitch and timbre combine to influence the perception of speaker characteristics such as size and age. Together, they can be used to categorize speaker sex with almost perfect accuracy. While it is known that domestic dogs can match a voice to a person of the same sex, there has been no investigation into whether dogs are sensitive to the correlation between pitch and timbre. We recorded a female voice giving three commands (‘Sit’, ‘Lay down’, ‘Come here’), and manipulated the recordings to lower the fundamental frequency (thus lowering pitch), increase simulated VTL (hence affecting timbre), or both (synthesized adult male voice). Dogs responded to the original adult female and synthesized adult male voices equivalently. Their tendency to obey the commands was, however, reduced when either pitch or timbre was manipulated alone. These results suggest that dogs are sensitive to both the pitch and timbre of human voices, and that they learn about the natural covariation of these perceptual attributes.

Intelligibility of bone-conducted speech detected on the scalp

Bone-conduction microphones (BCMs) can detect speakers' voices with high signal-to-noise ratio even under extremely noisy environments like a machine factory or an engine room of a watercraft. BCMs are ordinarily attached to the front of the neck (larynx), therefore, it is sometimes accompanied by discomfort and esthetic problems. In order to solve such problems, we have been developing a novel BCM system built in a helmet, however, characteristics of bone-conducted speech detected on the scalp need to be clarified. In this study, mono-syllable articulations of bone-conducted speech detected at several locations on the head and neck were measured. Also, the speech transmission index (STI), objective measure of signal transmission quality, was calculated. The results indicated that the forehead and the vertex showed better articulation and STI than the mastoid process of the temporal bone, the mandibular condyle, and the occiput. In terms of the gender difference, the forehead and the vertex showed higher scores for the male voice, whereas the cheek showed the highest for the female voice. Additionally, the larynx showed lower scores than others. These results indicated that the attenuation of high-frequency components are smaller at the forehead and the vertex.

Comparative perceptual evaluation and acoustic voice analysis of a transgender client male to female before and after laser-assisted voice adjustment surgery

In this study, we examined changes in the voice quality of a transgender client who had previously undergone male-to-female (MtF) transition. We conducted a longitudinal phonetic analysis after obtaining recordings from our client before and after undergoing laser-assisted voice adjustment (LAVA) surgery. The following acoustic parameters were compared: fundamental frequency (F0) measures, local jitter, shimmer, harmonic to noise ratio, phonation time, and long-term average spectrum. We assumed that the voice would not change significantly as a result of previous hormonal and vocal therapy, and that its timbre would be closer to female values after LAVA surgery. Since the client was on hormone therapy before the surgery, the average values of F0 corresponded to the values of a normal female voice (190.1 Hz), and, after surgery, the voice became significantly higher in phonation (235.6 Hz). Before surgery, the voice was high for a male voice during reading (mean F0 = 150.19 Hz for non-fricative text (NT) and mean F0 = 158.06 Hz for fricative text (FT)). After surgery, the voice exhibited higher F0 values (F0 = 184.72 Hz for NT and F0 = 191.87 Hz for FT). Before surgery, the voice was average high for a male voice during spontaneous speech (F0 = 119.90 Hz), while after surgery the F0 was 161.33 Hz during spontaneous speech, which is somewhat lower than the average pitch values of the female voice, but its timbral quality is more feminine. Since spontaneous speech is very important for comparison vocal timbre, we can conclude that the 42 Hz difference observed is notable. Although the minimal and maximal values of F0 based on phonation were significantly higher after surgery (p < 0.001), the range was limited. The total results of the F0 measures are higher than expected, while the shortened phonation time points to the need for voice therapy. Considering all our results, we can conclude that it is important to discuss a client’s profession before considering LAVA surgery.

Tribesourcing Southwest Films

As a work in progress, the Tribesourcing Southwest Film Project seeks to decolonize midcentury US educational films about the Native peoples of the Southwestern United States by recording counter-narrations from cultural insiders. These films originate from the American Indian Film Gallery, a collection awarded to the University of Arizona (UA) in 2011. Made in the mid-twentieth century for the US K–12 educational and television markets, these 16 mm Kodachrome films reflect mainstream cultural attitudes of the day. The fully saturated-color visual narratives are for the most part quite remarkable, although the male "voice of God" narration often pronounces meaning that is inaccurate or disrespectful. At this historical distance, many of these films have come to be understood by both Native community insiders and outside scholars as documentation of cultural practices and lifeways—and, indeed, languages—that are receding as practitioners and speakers pass on. The Tribesourcingfilm.com project seeks to rebalance the historical record through collaborative digital intervention, intentionally shifting emphasis from external perceptions of Native peoples to the voices, knowledges, and languages of the peoples represented in the films by participatory recording of new narrations for the films. Native narrators record new narrations for the films, actively decolonizing this collection and performing information redress through the merger of vintage visuals and new audio.

Perception of Social Odor and Gender-Related Differences Investigated Through the Use of Transfer Entropy and Embodied Medium

The perception of putative pheromones or social odors (PPSO) in humans is a widely debated topic because the published results seem ambiguous. Our research aimed to evaluate how cross-modal processing of PPSO and gender voice can affect the behavioral and psychophysiological states of the subject during a listening task with a bodily contact medium, and how these effects could be gender related. Before the experimental session, three embodied media, were exposed to volatilized estratetraenol (Estr), 5α-androst-16-en-3 α-ol (Andr), and Vaseline oil. The experimental session consisted in listening to a story that were transmitted, with a male or female voice, by the communicative medium via a Bluetooth system during a listening task, recorded through 64-active channel electroencephalography (EEG). The sense of co-presence and social presence, elicited by the medium, showed how the established relationship with the medium was gender dependent and modulated by the PPSO. In particular, Andr induced greater responses related to co-presence. The gender of the participants was related to the co-presence desire, where women imagined higher medium co-presence than men. EEG findings seemed to be more responsive to the PPSO–gender voice interaction, than behavioral results. The mismatch between female PPSO and male voice elicited the greatest cortical flow of information. In the case of the Andr–male voice condition, the trained model appeared to assign more relevance to the flow of information to the right frontotemporal regions (involved in odor recognition memory and social behavior). The Estr–male voice condition showed activation of the bilateral frontoparietal network, which is linked to cognitive control, cognitive flexibility, and auditory consciousness. The model appears to distinguish the dissonance condition linked to Andr matched with a female voice: it highlights a flow of information to the right occipital lobe and to the frontal pole. The PPSO could influence the co-presence judgements and EEG response. The results seem suggest that could be an implicit pattern linked to PPSO-related gender differences and gender voice.

Assigned Female at Death

Sometime after 1188, Engelhard of Langheim composed a story about a Cistercian monk named Joseph. Engelhard insisted Joseph was a woman, but he also undercut normative assumptions to display gender fluidities for which he lacked a conceptual vocabulary. He preserved a binary gender system that controlled the dangers of a woman in a male monastery. Yet his willingness to ventriloquize Joseph’s male voice presents a Joseph who, with God’s help, successfully performed his male trans identity, while his depiction of Joseph’s death suggests Joseph’s soul miraculously became female after he died. Engelhard did not explicitly acknowledge either possibility, but in a world in which the miraculous could break naturalized categories, both transitions remain beneath the surface of his tale.

Unity assumption between face and voice modulates audiovisual temporal recalibration

Audiovisual temporal recalibration refers to a shift in the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) between audio and visual signals triggered by prolonged exposure to asynchronies between these signals. Previous research indicated that the spatial proximity of audiovisual signals can be a determinant of which pairs of signals are temporally recalibrated when multiple events compete for recalibration. Here we show that temporal recalibration is modulated by an observer’s assumption that the audiovisual signals originate from the same unitary event (“unity assumption”). Participants were shown alternating face photos and voices of the male and female speakers. These stimuli were presented equally spaced in time, and the voices were presented monaurally through headphones, such that no spatiotemporal-based grouping was implied for these stimuli. There were two conditions for the stimulus sequence in the adaptation phase: one in which a face photo always preceded its corresponding voice within each pairing of audiovisual stimuli (i.e., multiple repetitions of the sequence: female voice – male face – male voice – female voice), and the other one in which the corresponding voice always preceded its face photo. We found a shift in the PSS between these audiovisual signals towards the temporal order for the same gender person. The results show that the unity assumption between face photos and voices affects temporal recalibration, indicating the possibility that the brain selectively recalibrates the asynchronies of audiovisual signals that are considered to originate from the same unitary event in a cluttered environment.

Pengenalan Jenis Kelamin Manusia Berbasis Suara Menggunakan MFCC dan GMM

Biometric information that exists in humans is unique from one human to another. One of the biometric data that is easily obtained is the human voice. The human voice is identic data that can differentiate between individuals. When we hear human voices directly, it is easy for our ears to tell the person who is speaking is male or female. But sometimes male voices can resemble girls and vice versa. Therefore, we propose a human voice detection system through Artificial Intelligence (AI) in machine learning. In this study, we used the Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients (MFCC) method to extract human voice features and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) for the classification of female or male voice data. The experiment results showed that the system built was able to detect human gender through biometric voice data with an accuracy of 81.18%.

Low fundamental and formant frequencies predict fighting ability among male mixed martial arts fighters

Human voice pitch is highly sexually dimorphic and eminently quantifiable, making it an ideal phenotype for studying the influence of sexual selection. In both traditional and industrial populations, lower pitch in men predicts mating success, reproductive success, and social status and shapes social perceptions, especially those related to physical formidability. Due to practical and ethical constraints however, scant evidence tests the central question of whether male voice pitch and other acoustic measures indicate actual fighting ability in humans. To address this, we examined pitch, pitch variability, and formant position of 475 mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters from an elite fighting league, with each fighter’s acoustic measures assessed from multiple voice recordings extracted from audio or video interviews available online (YouTube, Google Video, podcasts), totaling 1312 voice recording samples. In four regression models each predicting a separate measure of fighting ability (win percentages, number of fights, Elo ratings, and retirement status), no acoustic measure significantly predicted fighting ability above and beyond covariates. However, after fight statistics, fight history, height, weight, and age were used to extract underlying dimensions of fighting ability via factor analysis, pitch and formant position negatively predicted “Fighting Experience” and “Size” factor scores in a multivariate regression model, explaining 3–8% of the variance. Our findings suggest that lower male pitch and formants may be valid cues of some components of fighting ability in men.