Vocal responses to emotional picture viewing

Abstract

Vocal changes in emotional situations may identify contributing factors in behavioral voice disorders and direct more efficient therapies. Finding appropriate measures of voicing that detect emotional conditions is a first step in this line of investigation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether electroglottography (EGG) contact quotient is a viable measure to detect vocal changes in different emotion states. Vocal responses in 18 vocally healthy participants were measured using EGG contact quotient during picture viewing from the International Affective Picture System. Results demonstrated that in negative emotional conditions participants employed significantly greater EGG contact quotient than in neutral or positive conditions. EGG contact quotient appears to be a viable measure to investigate voice and emotion.

Key words::

• Electroglottography
• emotion
• normal voice
• voice

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Gabriel Hershberger, Northern Illinois University summer research intern, for his assistance in running participants for this experiment; Inna Natanova, Silvia Jeliazkova, and Kately Laughery, volunteer research assistants, for their data processing and document processing; Jamie Mayer in the School of Allied Health and Communicative Disorders for her helpful editing comments; Martin Rothenberg for his generous technical assistance; and the two reviewers who helped in clarifying this project. Particular thanks go to Thomas Gleeson, independent contractor, for his tireless work on software set-up for this experiment.

Declaration of interest: A portion of this research was funded through the Office of Sponsored Projects at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA. The authors report no conflicts of interest.