title: Mapping emotions into acoustic space: the role of voice production.
abstract: Research on the vocal expression of emotion has long since used a "fishing expedition" approach to find acoustic markers for emotion categories and dimensions. Although partially successful, the underlying mechanisms have not yet been elucidated. To illustrate that this research can profit from considering the underlying voice production mechanism, we specifically analyzed short affect bursts (sustained/a/vowels produced by 10 professional actors for five emotions) according to physiological variations in phonation (using acoustic parameters derived from the acoustic signal and the inverse filter estimated voice source waveform). Results show significant emotion main effects for 11 of 12 parameters. Subsequent principal components analysis revealed three components that explain acoustic variations due to emotion, including "tension," "perturbation," and "voicing frequency." These results suggest that future work may benefit from theory-guided development of parameters to assess differences in physiological voice production mechanisms in the vocal expression of different emotions.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, 7 Rue des Battoirs, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland. Sona.Patel@unige.ch
authors.forename: Sona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.forename: Klaus R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Scherer
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Björkner
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sundberg
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000162:Acoustics; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013060:Speech; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*