Ladd, D.R., Silverman, K., Tolkmitt, F., Bergmann, G., & Scherer, K.R. (1985). Evidence for the independent function of intonation contour type, voice quality, and f0 range in signalling speaker affect. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America: 78 (2), 435–444.
Presentation: Shelly
Summary: Thomas
Based on an earlier study (Scherer et al., 1984), there are two types of vocal cues to speaker affect. The continuous acoustic variables such as F0 range and voice quality reflect the states of the speaker in terms of physiological arousal, while the linguistic categorical variables such as contour types signal speaker’s attitude. The present study aimed to provide more evidence to these findings using three judgment experiments. Intonation contour type and F0 range were systematically controlled and varied. The first experiment was employed to see whether contour, range, and voice quality have independent effects in signaling affect and whether the first two variables are more related to speaker arousal than voice quality is. The materials contained three sentences (referred to as the text variable), which were resynthesized with two levels of contour, range, and voice quality, thereby generating 24 stimuli in total. The participants were asked to judge the affect of each stimulus on five bipolar 8-point scales for arousal and attitudinal variables, respectively. The result of ANOVA tests showed that range and voice quality had a strong effect on judgment related to speaker arousal; a wider range and harsh voice quality are signals of arousal, annoyance, and involvement. There were also effects of range and voice quality on cognitive attitudes, yet the effect sizes were smaller. On the other hand, contour, hypothesized to be more related to cognitive attitudes, had a significant effect on both arousal and attitudinal scales. As for interactions, no significant effect between contour, range, and voice quality was found. A follow-up experiment with a similar design was done to see whether the results on range and contour could be generalized when one additional factor, speaker, was involved. The other adjustment was that the ratings contained four 8-point unipolar scales for arousal and attitudinal variables, respectively. The results for range were replicated, yet only one significant effect of contour was found. Since only the effect of range seemed consistent, one additional RANGE x TEXT x SPEAKER experiment was done with five levels of range to see whether the effects of range were categorical or continuous. The results showed that the effect of range is linear for all scales, and the linear trend was highly significant, suggesting a continuous effect. To conclude, pervasive effects of range, especially on arousal scales, were found. As for voice quality and contour, the results were less consistent, which may be owing to the inability to systematically manipulate voice quality and insufficient understanding about the linguistic structure of intonation.
