Affiliation:
1. Division of Cognitive Science, Lund University, 22100 Lund, Sweden
2. Equipe de Neuro-Ethologie Sensorielle, CNRS and University of Saint Étienne, UMR 5293, 42023 St-Étienne, France
3. CNRS, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Laboratoire de Dynamique du Langage, University of Lyon 2, 69007 Lyon, France
Abstract
A lion's roar, a dog's bark, an angry yell in a pub brawl: what do these vocalizations have in common? They all sound harsh due to nonlinear vocal phenomena (NLP)—deviations from regular voice production, hypothesized to lower perceived voice pitch and thereby exaggerate the apparent body size of the vocalizer. To test this yet uncorroborated hypothesis, we synthesized human nonverbal vocalizations, such as roars, groans and screams, with and without NLP (amplitude modulation, subharmonics and chaos). We then measured their effects on nearly 700 listeners' perceptions of three psychoacoustic (pitch, timbre, roughness) and three ecological (body size, formidability, aggression) characteristics. In an explicit rating task, all NLP lowered perceived voice pitch, increased voice darkness and roughness, and caused vocalizers to sound larger, more formidable and more aggressive. Key results were replicated in an implicit associations test, suggesting that the ‘harsh is large’ bias will arise in ecologically relevant confrontational contexts that involve a rapid, and largely implicit, evaluation of the opponent's size. In sum, nonlinearities in human vocalizations can flexibly communicate both formidability and intention to attack, suggesting they are not a mere byproduct of loud vocalizing, but rather an informative acoustic signal well suited for intimidating potential opponents.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Reference50 articles.
1. Bradbury JW Vehrencamp SL. 2011 Principles of animal communication 2nd edn. Sunderland MA: Sinauer Associates.
2. Searcy WA, Nowicki S. 2005 The evolution of animal communication: reliability and deception in signaling systems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3. Efficacy in deceptive vocal exaggeration of human body size
4. Human roars communicate upper-body strength more effectively than do screams or aggressive and distressed speech
5. The evolution of acoustic size exaggeration in terrestrial mammals
Cited by
17 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献