80 research outputs found
Voice cues are used in a similar way by blind and sighted adults when assessing womenâs body size
Humansâ ability to gauge another personâs body size from their voice alone may serve multiple functions ranging from threat assessment to speaker normalization. However, how this ability is acquired remains unknown. In two experiments we tested whether sighted, congenitally blind and late blind adults could accurately judge the relative heights of women from paired voice stimuli, and importantly, whether errors in size estimation varied with task difficulty across groups. Both blind (n = 56) and sighted (n = 61) listeners correctly judged womenâs relative heights on approximately 70% of low difficulty trials, corroborating previous findings for judging menâs heights. However, accuracy dropped to chance levels for intermediate difficulty trials and to 25% for high difficulty trials, regardless of the listenerâs sightedness, duration of vision loss, sex, or age. Thus, blind adults estimated womenâs height with the same degree of accuracy, but also the same pattern of errors, as did sighted controls. Our findings provide further evidence that visual experience is not necessary for accurate body size estimation. Rather, both blind and sighted listeners appear to follow a general rule, mapping low auditory frequencies to largeness across a range of contexts. This sound-size mapping emerges without visual experience, and is likely very important for humans
Can blind persons accurately assess body size from the voice?
Vocal tract resonances provide reliable information about a speakerâs body size that human listeners utilize for biosocial judgments as well as speech recognition. Although humans can accurately assess menâs relative body size from the voice alone, how this ability is acquired remains unknown. In the present study we test the prediction that accurate voice-based size estimation is possible without prior audiovisual experience linking low frequencies to large bodies. Ninety-one healthy congenitally or early blind, late blind, and sighted adults (aged 20-65) participated in the study. On the basis of vowel sounds alone, participants assessed the relative body sizes of male pairs of varying heights. Accuracy of voice-based body size assessments significantly exceeded chance and did not differ among participants who were sighted, congenitally blind, or lost their sight later in life. Accuracy increased significantly with relative differences in physical height between men, suggesting that both blind and sighted participants utilized reliable vocal cues to size (i.e., vocal tract resonances). Our findings demonstrate that prior visual experience is not necessary for accurate body size estimation. This capacity, integral to both nonverbal communication and speech perception, may be present at birth or may generalize from broader cross-modal correspondences
Volitional exaggeration of body size through fundamental and formant frequency modulation in humans
Several mammalian species scale their voice fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies in competitive and mating contexts, reducing vocal tract and laryngeal allometry thereby exaggerating apparent body size. Although humansâ rare capacity to volitionally modulate these same frequencies is thought to subserve articulated speech, the potential function of voice frequency modulation in human nonverbal communication remains largely unexplored. Here, the voices of 167 men and women from Canada, Cuba, and Poland were recorded in a baseline condition and while volitionally imitating a physically small and large body size. Modulation of F0, formant spacing (âF), and apparent vocal tract length (VTL) were measured using Praat. Our results indicate that men and women spontaneously and systemically increased VTL and decreased F0 to imitate a large body size, and reduced VTL and increased F0 to imitate small size. These voice modulations did not differ substantially across cultures, indicating potentially universal sound-size correspondences or anatomical and biomechanical constraints on voice modulation. In each culture, men generally modulated their voices (particularly formants) more than did women. This latter finding could help to explain sexual dimorphism in F0 and formants that is currently unaccounted for by sexual dimorphism in human vocal anatomy and body size
Are menâs perceptions of sexually dimorphic vocal characteristics related to their testosterone levels?
Feminine physical characteristics in women are positively correlated with markers of their mate quality. Previous research on menâs judgments of womenâs facial attractiveness suggests that men show stronger preferences for feminine characteristics in womenâs faces when their own testosterone levels are relatively high. Such results could reflect stronger preferences for high quality mates when mating motivation is strong and/or following success in male-male competition. Given these findings, the current study investigated whether a similar effect of testosterone occurs for menâs preferences for feminine characteristics in womenâs voices. Menâs preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of womenâs and menâs voices were assessed in five weekly test sessions and saliva samples were collected in each test session. Analyses showed no relationship between menâs voice preferences and their testosterone levels. Menâs tendency to perceive masculinized menâs and womenâs voices as more dominant was also unrelated to their testosterone levels. Together, the results of the current study suggest that testosterone-linked changes in responses to sexually dimorphic characteristics previously reported for men's perceptions of faces do not occur for men's perceptions of voices
Voice-based assessments of trustworthiness, competence, and warmth in blind and sighted adults
The study of voice perception in congenitally blind individuals allows researchers rare insight into how a lifetime of visual deprivation affects the development of voice perception. Previous studies have suggested that blind adults outperform their sighted counterparts in low-level auditory tasks testing spatial localization and pitch discrimination, as well as in verbal speech processing; however, blind persons generally show no advantage in nonverbal voice recognition or discrimination tasks. The present study is the first to examine whether visual experience influences the development of social stereotypes that are formed on the basis of nonverbal vocal characteristics (i.e., voice pitch). Groups of 27 congenitally or early-blind adults and 23 sighted controls assessed the trustworthiness, competence, and warmth of men and women speaking a series of vowels, whose voice pitches had been experimentally raised or lowered. Blind and sighted listeners judged both menâs and womenâs voices with lowered pitch as being more competent and trustworthy than voices with raised pitch. In contrast, raised-pitch voices were judged as being warmer than were lowered-pitch voices, but only for womenâs voices. Crucially, blind and sighted persons did not differ in their voice-based assessments of competence or warmth, or in their certainty of these assessments, whereas the association between low pitch and trustworthiness in womenâs voices was weaker among blind than sighted participants. This latter result suggests that blind persons may rely less heavily on nonverbal cues to trustworthiness compared to sighted persons. Ultimately, our findings suggest that robust perceptual associations that systematically link voice pitch to the social and personal dimensions of a speaker can develop without visual input
Low is large: spatial location and pitch interact in voice-based body size estimation
The binding of incongruent cues poses a challenge for multimodal perception. Indeed, although taller objects emit sounds from higher elevations, low-pitched sounds are perceptually mapped both to large size and to low elevation. In the present study, we examined how these incongruent vertical spatial cues (up is more) and pitch cues (low is large) to size interact, and whether similar biases influence size perception along the horizontal axis. In Experiment 1, we measured listenersâ voice-based judgments of human body size using pitch-manipulated voices projected from a high versus a low, and a right versus a left, spatial location. Listeners associated low spatial locations with largeness for lowered-pitch but not for raised-pitch voices, demonstrating that pitch overrode vertical-elevation cues. Listeners associated rightward spatial locations with largeness, regardless of voice pitch. In Experiment 2, listeners performed the task while sitting or standing, allowing us to examine self-referential cues to elevation in size estimation. Listeners associated vertically low and rightward spatial cues with largeness more for lowered- than for raised-pitch voices. These correspondences were robust to sex (of both the voice and the listener) and head elevation (standing or sitting); however, horizontal correspondences were amplified when participants stood. Moreover, when participants were standing, their judgments of how much larger menâs voices sounded than womenâs increased when the voices were projected from the low speaker. Our results provide novel evidence for a multidimensional spatial mapping of pitch that is generalizable to human voices and that affects performance in an indirect, ecologically relevant spatial task (body size estimation). These findings suggest that crossmodal pitch correspondences evoke both low-level and higher-level cognitive processes
Effect of formant frequency spacing on perceived gender in pre-pubertal children's voices
<div><p>Background</p><p>It is usually possible to identify the sex of a pre-pubertal child from their voice, despite the absence of sex differences in fundamental frequency at these ages. While it has been suggested that the overall spacing between formants (formant frequency spacing - ÎF) is a key component of the expression and perception of sex in children's voices, the effect of its continuous variation on sex and gender attribution has not yet been investigated.</p><p>Methodology/Principal findings</p><p>In the present study we manipulated voice ÎF of eight year olds (two boys and two girls) along continua covering the observed variation of this parameter in pre-pubertal voices, and assessed the effect of this variation on adult ratings of speakers' sex and gender in two separate experiments. In the first experiment (sex identification) adults were asked to categorise the voice as either male or female. The resulting identification function exhibited a gradual slope from male to female voice categories. In the second experiment (gender rating), adults rated the voices on a continuum from âmasculine boyâ to âfeminine girlâ, gradually decreasing their masculinity ratings as ÎF increased.</p><p>Conclusions/Significance</p><p>These results indicate that the role of ÎF in voice gender perception, which has been reported in adult voices, extends to pre-pubertal children's voices: variation in ÎF not only affects the perceived sex, but also the perceived masculinity or femininity of the speaker. We discuss the implications of these observations for the expression and perception of gender in children's voices given the absence of anatomical dimorphism in overall vocal tract length before puberty.</p></div
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Being fluent and keeping looking
The complexities of the many concepts and models around information literacy are considered, and some personal views given as to how they may best be clarified, both theoretically and practically. A slightly adapted idea of the concept of information fluency can serve as a main general purpose for the promotion of information literacy, expressed as a more specific meta-model for the prevailing technological environment, and as still more specific components for a particular context. The focus of this relatively stable general formulation is on understanding, rather than skills or competences. It can incorporate the need for education, advice and counseling, as well as information provision, and with domain-specific literacies, as well as supporting personal information literacy
Sex stereotypes influence adults' perception of babies' cries
Background: Despite widespread evidence that gender stereotypes influence human parental behavior, their potential effects on adultsâ perception of babiesâ cries have been overlooked. In particular, whether adult listeners overgeneralize the sex dimorphism that characterizes the voice of adult speakers (men are lower-pitched than women) to their perception of babiesâ cries has not been investigated.
Methods: We used playback experiments combining natural and re-synthesised cries of 3 month-old babies to investigate whether the interindividual variation in the fundamental frequency (pitch) of cries affected adult listenersâ identification of the babyâs sex, their perception the babyâs femininity and masculinity, and whether these biases interacted with their perception of the level of discomfort expressed by the cry.
Results: We show that low-pitched cries are more likely to be attributed to boys and high-pitched cries to girls, despite the absence of sex differences in pitch. Moreover, low-pitched boys are perceived as more masculine and high-pitched girls are perceived as more feminine. Finally, adult men rate relatively low-pitched cries as expressing more discomfort when presented as belonging to boys than to girls.
Conclusion: Such biases in caregiversâ responses to babiesâ cries may have implications on childrenâs immediate welfare and on the development of their gender identity
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