Perceptual cues in nonverbal vocal expressions of emotion

摘要

Work on facial expressions of emotions (Calder, Burton, Miller, Young, & Akamatsu, [200111. Calder , A. J. , Burton , A. M. , Miller , P. , Young , A. W. and Akamatsu , S. 2001 . A principal components analysis of facial expressions . Vision Research , 41 : 1179 - 1208 . [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references]) and emotionally inflected speech (Banse & Scherer, [19966. Banse , R. and Scherer , K. R. 1996 . Acoustic profiles in vocal emotion expression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 70 : 614 - 636 . View all references]) has successfully delineated some of the physical properties that underlie emotion recognition. To identify the acoustic cues used in the perception of nonverbal emotional expressions like laugher and screams, an investigation was conducted into vocal expressions of emotion, using nonverbal vocal analogues of the “basic” emotions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and surprise; Ekman & Friesen, [197124. Ekman , P. and Friesen , W. V. 1971 . Constants across cultures in the face and emotion . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 17 : 124 - 129 . [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®]View all references]; Scott et al., [199747. Scott , S. K. , Young , A. W. , Calder , A. J. , Hellawell , D. J. , Aggleton , J. P. and Johnson , M. 1997 . Impaired auditory recognition of fear and anger following bilateral amygdala lesions . Nature , 385 : 254 - 257 . [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references]), and of positive affective states (Ekman, [199221. Ekman , P. 1992 . An argument for basic emotions . Cognition and Emotion , 6 : 169 - 200 . [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®]View all references], [200323. Ekman , P. 2003 . Emotions revealed: Recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life , London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson . View all references]; Sauter & Scott, [200740. Sauter , D. and Scott , S. K. 2007 . More than one kind of happiness: Can we recognize vocal expressions of different positive states? . Motivation and Emotion , 31 : 192 - 199 . [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references]). First, the emotional stimuli were categorized and rated to establish that listeners could identify and rate the sounds reliably and to provide confusion matrices. A principal components analysis of the rating data yielded two underlying dimensions, correlating with the perceived valence and arousal of the sounds. Second, acoustic properties of the amplitude, pitch, and spectral profile of the stimuli were measured. A discriminant analysis procedure established that these acoustic measures provided sufficient discrimination between expressions of emotional categories to permit accurate statistical classification. Multiple linear regressions with participants' subjective ratings of the acoustic stimuli showed that all classes of emotional ratings could be predicted by some combination of acoustic measures and that most emotion ratings were predicted by different constellations of acoustic features. The results demonstrate that, similarly to affective signals in facial expressions and emotionally inflected speech, the perceived emotional character of affective vocalizations can be predicted on the basis of their physical features.