The role of the Age and Gender, and the Complexity of the Syntactic Unit in the Perception of Affective Emotions in Voice
CoDAS 2024
Baiba Trinīte, Anita Zdanoviča, Daiga Kurme, Evija Lavrane, Ilva Magazeina-Līduma, Anita Jansone

Purpose The study aimed to identify (1) whether the age and gender of listeners and the length of vocal stimuli affect emotion discrimination accuracy in voice; and (2) whether the determined level of expression of perceived affective emotions is age and gender-dependent. Methods Thirty-two age-matched listeners listened to 270 semantically neutral voice samples produced in neutral, happy, and angry intonation by ten professional actors. The participants were required to categorize the auditory stimulus based on three options and judge the intensity of emotional expression in the sample using a customized tablet web interface. Results The discrimination accuracy of happy and angry emotions decreased with age, while accuracy in discriminating neutral emotions increased with age. Females rated the intensity level of perceived affective emotions higher than males across all linguistic units. These were: for angry emotions in words (z = -3.599, p < .001), phrases (z = -3.218, p = .001), and texts (z = -2.272, p = .023), for happy emotions in words (z = -5.799, p < .001), phrases (z = -4.706, p < .001), and texts (z = -2.699, p = .007). Conclusion Accuracy in perceiving vocal expressions of emotions varies according to age and gender. Young adults are better at distinguishing happy and angry emotions than middle-aged adults, while middle-aged adults tend to categorize perceived affective emotions as neutral. Gender also plays a role, with females rating expressions of affective emotions in voices higher than males. Additionally, the length of voice stimuli impacts emotion discrimination accuracy.


Keywords
voice, perception, emotional prosody, affective prosody
DOI
10.1590/2317-1782/20242024009en
Hyperlink
https://www.scielo.br/j/codas/a/Mk7g5tbVhTjXVcbzvHTRqjP/?lang=en

Trinīte, B., Zdanoviča, A., Kurme, D., Lavrane, E., Magazeina-Līduma, I., Jansone, A. The role of the Age and Gender, and the Complexity of the Syntactic Unit in the Perception of Affective Emotions in Voice. CoDAS, 2024, Vol. 36, No. 5, Article number e20240009. ISSN 2317-1782. Pieejams: doi:10.1590/2317-1782/20242024009en

Publication language
English (en)
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