This book addresses various aspects of acoustic–phonetic analysis, including voice quality and fundamental frequency, and the effects of speech fluency and non-native accents, by examining read speech, public speech, and conversations. Voice is a sexually dimorphic trait that can convey important biological and social information about the speaker, and empirical findings suggest that voice characteristics and preferences play an important role in both intra- and intersexual selection, such as competition and mating, and social evaluation. Discussing evaluation criteria like physical attractiveness, pleasantness, likability, and even persuasiveness and charisma, the book bridges the gap between social and biological views on voice attractiveness. It presents conceptual, methodological and empirical work applying methods such as passive listening tests, psychoacoustic rating experiments, and crowd-sourced and interactive scenarios and highlights the diversity not only of the methods used when studying voice attractiveness, but also of the domains investigated, such as politicians’ speech, experimental speed dating, speech synthesis, vocal pathology, and voice preferences in human interactions as well as in human–computer and human–robot interactions. By doing so, it identifies widespread and complementary approaches and establishes common ground for further research.
Author(s): Benjamin Weiss, Jürgen Trouvain, Melissa Barkat-Defradas, John J. Ohala
Series: Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics
Edition: 1st ed. 2021
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 344
Preface
Contents
Editors and Contributors
Part IGeneral Considerations
1 Voice Attractiveness: Concepts, Methods, and Data
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Concepts
1.2.1 Voice, Speaker, and Speech
1.2.2 Sexual Selection and Voice Attractiveness
1.2.3 Likability and Social Attractiveness
1.2.4 Charisma and Leadership
1.3 Methods
1.3.1 Experimental Research
1.3.2 Modeling
1.3.3 Technological Applications
1.4 Data
1.4.1 Controlled Experimental Data
1.4.2 Naturalistic Data Recorded in the Lab
1.4.3 Data from the Wild
1.5 Conclusions
References
2 Prosodic Aspects of the Attractive Voice
2.1 Understanding Vocal Attractiveness
2.2 Political Attractiveness and Charisma
2.2.1 Vocal Correlates of Charisma
2.2.2 Defining Charisma
2.3 Business Attractiveness
2.4 Vocal Correlates of Trust
2.5 Likeability or Nonsexual Social Attractiveness
2.6 Romantic Attractiveness
2.7 Conclusions
References
3 The Vocal Attractiveness of Charismatic Leaders
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Charisma Defined as the Social Attractiveness of Group Leaders
3.1.2 Charisma and Voice Behavior: The Charismatic Voice
3.2 Charismatic Voices
3.2.1 Cultural- and Language-Based Descriptors of Charisma
3.2.2 Charisma Perception in Cross-Language Settings
3.3 Conclusions
3.3.1 Leaders' Social Attractiveness
3.3.2 The Charismatic Voice
References
4 Vocal Preferences in Humans: A Systematic Review
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Preferences for Vocal Height
4.3 Preferences for Vocal Modulation
4.4 Preferences for Timbre
4.5 Preferences for Voice Quality
4.6 Sources of Variations in Vocal Preferences
4.6.1 The Effect of Menstrual Cycle on Females' Vocal Preferences
4.6.2 The Effect of Sociocultural Environment on Vocal Quality
4.7 How Evolution Shaped Human Voice via Opposite Sex's Preferences
4.8 Conclusion
References
Part IIVoice
5 What Does It Mean for a Voice to Sound ``Normal''?
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Methods
5.2.1 Speakers and Voice Samples
5.2.2 Listeners and Listening Task
5.2.3 Acoustic Analyses
5.3 Results
5.3.1 Categorical Judgments of ``Normal'' Versus ``Not-Normal'' Voice Quality
5.3.2 Can We Predict Listeners' Categorical Responses from Voice Acoustics?
5.3.3 Do Listeners at Least Sort Voices in Similar Fashions?
5.3.4 Can We Predict the Extent to Which a Voice Sounds Not Normal? What Parameters Are Associated with Increasing Perceived Vocal Deviance for Individual Listeners?
5.4 Discussion and Conclusions
References
6 The Role of Voice Evaluation in Voice Recall
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Voice Evaluation Experiments
6.2.1 Materials for All Experiments
6.2.2 Intelligibility
6.2.3 Gender Categorization Fluency
6.2.4 Acoustic Similarity
6.2.5 Perceptual Similarity
6.2.6 Subjective Voice Ratings
6.2.7 Global Voice Assessment
6.3 Voice Memory Experiment
6.3.1 Methods
6.3.2 Results
6.4 General Discussion
6.5 Conclusion
References
7 Voice, Sexual Selection, and Reproductive Success
7.1 Evolutionary Background
7.1.1 Sexual Selection
7.1.2 Vocal Dimorphism
7.2 The Functional Role of the Human Voice
7.2.1 Contest Competition and Vocal Dominance
7.2.2 Mate Choice and Vocal Attractiveness
7.3 Reproductive and Mating Successes
7.3.1 Its Quantification
7.3.2 The Underlying Biological Quality of Voice
7.4 Conclusion and Future Perspectives
References
8 On Voice Averaging and Attractiveness
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Voice Attractiveness Increases with Averaging
8.3 Effects of Distance-to-Mean
8.4 Effects of Voice Texture Smoothness
8.5 Neural Correlates of Perceived Voice Attractiveness
References
Part IIIProsody
9 Attractiveness of Male Speakers: Effects of Pitch and Tempo
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Methods
9.2.1 Participants
9.2.2 Materials
9.2.3 Speech Manipulations
9.2.4 Procedure
9.3 Results
9.4 Discussion
9.5 Conclusions
References
10 The Contribution of Amplitude Modulations in Speech to Perceived Charisma
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Acoustic Analysis
10.2.1 Method
10.2.2 Results
10.3 Perception Experiment
10.3.1 Participants
10.3.2 Material
10.3.3 Procedure
10.3.4 Results
10.3.5 General Discussion
10.4 Conclusion
References
11 Dress to Impress? On the Interaction of Attire with Prosody and Gender in the Perception of Speaker Charisma
11.1 Introduction
11.1.1 Charisma and Delivery
11.1.2 The Roles of Prosody and Attire
11.1.3 Aims and Assumptions
11.2 Method
11.2.1 Speakers
11.2.2 Image Material and the Independent Variable Attire
11.2.3 Speech Material and the Independent Variable Prosody
11.2.4 Experiment Design
11.2.5 Participant Sample and Experimental Procedure
11.3 Results
11.3.1 Male Speakers
11.3.2 Female Speakers
11.4 Discussion
11.4.1 Assumptions
11.4.2 The Bipartition of the Female Speaker Group
11.4.3 Further Practical Implications
11.4.4 The Scale “Charming”
11.4.5 Generalization
11.5 Conclusion and Outlook
References
12 Birds of a Feather Flock Together But Opposites Attract! On the Interaction of F0 Entrainment, Perceived Attractiveness, and Conversational Quality in Dating Conversations
12.1 Introduction
12.1.1 Prosodic Entrainment and Its Role in Interaction
12.1.2 Prosodic Entrainment and Perceived Conversational Quality
12.1.3 Prosodic Entrainment and Perceived Attractiveness
12.1.4 The Dilemma: Good Conversations with Attractive Interlocutors
12.2 Method
12.2.1 Subjects
12.2.2 Procedure
12.2.3 Types and Measurements of Entrainment
12.2.4 Acoustic Analysis
12.2.5 Statistical Analysis
12.3 Results
12.3.1 Effects of Perceived Attractiveness and Conversational Quality on Prosodic Entrainment
12.3.2 Effects of Prosodic Entrainment on Perceived Attractiveness and Conversational Quality
12.3.3 Convergence and Synchrony
12.4 Discussion
12.4.1 Effects of Perceived Attractiveness and Conversational Quality on Prosodic Entrainment
12.4.2 Effects of Prosodic Entrainment on Perceived Attractiveness and Conversational Quality
12.4.3 The Dilemma: Good Conversations with Attractive Interlocutors
12.4.4 Additional Thoughts and Further Implications
12.5 Conclusion
References
Part IVDatabases
13 Acoustic Correlates of Likable Speakers in the NSC Database
13.1 Introduction: Likability of Speakers
13.2 A Review on Acoustic Correlates
13.3 Material
13.4 Analysis
13.4.1 Factor Analysis
13.4.2 Correlation Analysis
13.4.3 Linear Regression Analysis
13.4.4 Non-linear Modeling
13.5 Discussion
13.6 Conclusion
References
14 Ranking and Comparing Speakers Based on Crowdsourced Pairwise Listener Ratings
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Rankings from Pairwise Comparisons
14.3 Stimuli and Rating Collection via Crowdsourcing
14.4 Ranking Analyses
14.4.1 The Influence of Rater Population on Ranking Outcome
14.4.2 Acoustic Correlates of Ranking Quality
14.5 Listener Preference Classification
14.5.1 Model Architecture
14.5.2 Data and Evaluation
14.5.3 Features and Conditions
14.5.4 Experiments and Results
14.6 Conclusions and Future Work
References
15 Multidimensional Mapping of Voice Attractiveness and Listener's Preference: Optimization and Estimation from Audio Signal
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Analysis of Paired Comparison
15.2.1 Universal Attractiveness Model
15.2.2 Personalized Attractiveness Model
15.3 Estimating Merits from Acoustic Features
15.4 Experimental Results
15.4.1 Recordings and Comparisons
15.4.2 Mapping to Multidimensional Merit Space
15.4.3 Merit Estimation from Acoustic Features
15.5 Conclusions
References
Part VTechnological Applications
16 Trust in Vocal Human–Robot Interaction: Implications for Robot Voice Design
16.1 Introduction
16.2 Trust in Voices
16.3 Trust in Robot Voices
16.3.1 Voice Naturalness
16.3.2 Voice Gender
16.3.3 Voice Accent
16.3.4 Voice Prosody
16.3.5 Voice Context and Expectations
16.4 Conclusion
References
17 Exploring Verbal Uncanny Valley Effects with Vague Language in Computer Speech
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Uncanny Valley
17.3 Politeness and Relational Work
17.3.1 Politeness in Machines
17.3.2 Politeness in Non-embodied Computer Speech
17.4 Implications for Verbal Uncanny Valley Effects
17.4.1 Identifying Appropriateness in Computer Speech
17.5 Future Work and Considerations for Computer Speech
17.6 Summary and Conclusion
References
