Acoustical Analysis of Posed Prosodic Expressions: Effects of Emotion and Sex

Prosodic expression is an important channel of emotional communication and can be assessed through computerized acoustical analysis. Fundamental Frequency (F0) is the most commonly studied acoustic measure and considered the best index of perceived pitch. In this study, we examined two factors that can influence prosodic expression, sex and emotion type, A special feature is the use of a neutral expression as a control measure. We also described procedures for eliciting posed prosodic expression via an experimental task from the New York Emotion Battery. Subjects were healthy men (n=10) and women (n=9), matched for. age (M = 29.2 yr.) and education (M= 15.6 yr). Subjects were asked to intone neutral-content sentences with happy, sad, and neutral prosody. F0 mean and standard deviation were measured using the Computerized Speech Lab program. Initial findings indicated that women produced significantly higher F0 values than did men and that happy sentences were produced with significantly higher F0 values t...