The relation between pitch perception preference and emotion identification

In our study, we explore the effect of synthetic vs analytic listening mode on the identification of emotions. Numerous psychoacoustic studies have shown that listeners differ in how they process complex sounds; some listeners focus on the fundamental frequency while others attend to the higher harmonics. The difference appears to have a neurological basis, expressed in a leftward (for F0 listeners) or rightward (for spectral listeners) asymmetry of gray matter volume in the lateral Heschl's gyrus. In our experiment we found that spectral listeners performed better in an emotion judgment task, which is what we expected based on the fact that the processing of emotional prosody is relatively right-hemisphere lateralized.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: INTERSPEECH
• Authors: Marie Nilsenová, Martijn Goudbeek, Luuk Kempen
• Keywords: INTERSPEECH 2010, Numerous Psychoacoustic Studies, Signal Processing, Spectral Listeners, Vs Analytic Listening