Acoustic profiles of distinct emotional expressions in laughter.
Although listeners are able to decode the underlying emotions embedded in acoustical laughter sounds, little is known about the acoustical cues that differentiate between the emotions. This study investigated the acoustical correlates of laughter expressing four different emotions: joy, tickling, taunting, and schadenfreude. Analysis of 43 acoustic parameters showed that the four emotions could be accurately discriminated on the basis of a small parameter set. Vowel quality contributed only minimally to emotional differentiation whereas prosodic parameters were more effective. Emotions are expressed by similar prosodic parameters in both laughter and speech.
Szameitat
Diana P
DP
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tubingen, Tubingen, Germany. d.szameitat@gmx.de
Alter
Kai
K
Szameitat
André J
AJ
Wildgruber
Dirk
D
Sterr
Annette
A
Darwin
Chris J
CJ
D000162:Acoustics; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D007845:Laughter; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D055815:Young Adult