The effect of communications medium on the fundamental frequency of speech

Interactions between two pairs of subjects were conducted face‐to‐face and over a two‐way closed‐circuit television medium and were tape recorded. The speech for each subject over each medium was edited to remove silent intervals and the resulting edited speech segments, each about 1 minute in duration, were analyzed by a computer implementation of the cepstrum method of fundamental‐frequency determination. The speech of all four subjects showed a statistically significant rise in fundamental frequency ranging from 3.89% to 7.83% for the closed‐circuit television condition relative to the face‐to‐face condition. This result could imply that two‐way closed‐circuit television is a more tense or stressful medium than face‐to‐face communication. Alternatively, the effect could be explained by such other factors as a rise in speech level caused by a greater perceived distance between the participants in the closed‐circuit television condition.