Midterm 1- Paralanguage

Question 1

functions (e.g., emotion, cognition, etc.)

Answer 1

• regulating flow of conversation
• emotional states
• cognition (i.e. pauses)
• speaker characteristics
• information (i.e. content meaning)
• impressions (i.e. power)

Question 2

vocal qualities and vocalizations

Answer 2

• qualities: vary from speaker to speaker (articulation, resonance, thinness), ex: Keith Richards has bad articulation
• vocalizations: characteristics that are modified by all speakers (loudness, pitch, stress)

Question 3

temporal characteristics (e.g., response latency, phonetic pause, silent pause, etc.)

Answer 3

-aspects of speech that are a function of time (speech rate, pause duration, response latency)
PAUSES:
-phoentic: duration of 250ms
-filled: duration>250ms, but has sound to it (e.g. umm, ahh)

Question 4

personality factors and vocal qualities

Answer 4

• extraversion:answer back fast, fewer silent pauses, gen. more fluent speech, faster, louder
• introversion: slower speech, pauses, repetition, stuttering (speech errors), quiet, withdrawn)
• dominance: overlap with extraversion, loud and fast, fluent, not many errors
• “type A behavior”: urgent, impatient, speech rate faster, louder volume, need environment to bring it out in them)

Question 5

emotional states and vocal qualities

Answer 5

• ANGER: high pitch, wide pitch range, loud, fast
• JOY: same as anger
• SAD: low pitch, narrow pitch range, quiet, slow

Question 6

what are some of the ways that researchers have studied paralanguage and emotion?

Answer 6

• read standard passage
• random splicing
• electronic content filtering
• synthesize voices (or voice characteristics)

Question 7

the impact of anxiety on the voice (esp. hesitations and speech rate)

Answer 7

• more speech disturbance ratio
• more response latency
• higher speech rate
• negative affect on arousal on performance

Question 8

cognitive load and vocal qualities (pauses, hesitancies, etc.)

Answer 8

• speech production is cognitively demanding
• decision making leads to hesitations
• hesitations cluster at beginning of clauses
• abstract nouns more latency than concrete nouns

Question 9

sex differences in vocal qualities

Answer 9

-easiest difference to identify from the voice: PITCH or fundamental frequency

Question 10

age and voice pitch, pause rate

Answer 10

-men have high pitch then lowers down then stays the same then goes a little higher once older, changes way more than woman voices

Question 11

decoding trustworthiness and expertise from speech rate

Answer 11

-faster seem more trustworthy

Question 12

what effect does amount of talk and pitch have on decoders?

Answer 12

• correlated with: leadership, control, power, status

- better to have something to say than nothing

Question 13

what makes for an “attractive” voice? how are attractive voices associated with facial qualities?

Answer 13

• loudness range
• lack of monotone
• resonance (smooth, strong)
• lack of nasality (fran example)
• good articulation

Question 14

how soon can children discriminate their mother’s voice?

Answer 14

• born with ability to recognize and discriminate mothers voice
• 38.4 weeks

Question 15

what is the effect of filled pauses on recall?

Answer 15

• recalled content of the story best when there were filled pauses
• may direct attention to the speech steam and this aids in recall

Question 16

interactive aspects of interruptions, accent, interruptions, tempo, loudness, and talk duration

Answer 16

• accent and dialect: accomodation/imitation of dialect, only face to face, unconcious
• interruptions: success depends upon difference in loudness between speakers and how much loudness increases from normal level of dialogue. Interruption leads to interruption
• loudness and duration: usually try to match with each other