Listener and context dependency in the perception of emotional aspects of infant voice.
Developmental aspects of an infant's ability to express emotions through vocalizations were studied based on perceptual rating experiments against 12 vocalization- and emotion-related reference words. Three groups of listeners, students, mothers with infants, and nursery governesses, rated 28 voice samples recorded from a male infant at 6, 9, 12 and 17 months of age, under a positive or negative context. Among three factors extracted by a factor analysis, one representing the emotional contrast of frightened/angry versus happy was found to be independent of listener group, infant age and context. The other two, one representing contrast between pleased/happy versus demanding/sad and the other seeking affection and rejecting/angry were dependent on infant age and context. These results may indicate that infants even at 6 months of age can express the emotional contrast of 'pleasure' versus 'discomfort' through vocalization, which listeners perceive independently in context.
Shimura
Y
Y
Faculty of Education, Saitama University, Japan.
Imaizumi
S
S
D000786:Anger; D001307:Auditory Perception; D004644:Emotions; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007845:Laughter; D008297:Male; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*