Talker Differences in Perceived Emotion in Clear and Conversational Speech.

Area of Science:

• Speech Perception
• Acoustic Phonetics
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Previous research indicates that perceived emotion, especially anger, differs between clear and conversational speech.
• Individual talker characteristics can influence how emotions are perceived in speech.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate talker variability in perceived emotion across clear and conversational speech styles.
• To analyze differences in the perception of six emotion categories: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Happiness, Sadness, and Neutral.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a database of 41 talkers producing emotionally neutral sentences in clear and conversational styles.
• Employed generalized linear mixed-effects modeling to analyze talker differences in emotion perception.
• Collected ratings from 26 healthy young adult listeners on perceived emotion.

Main Results:

• Significant effects of speaking style were observed across all emotion categories.
• Substantial talker differences in emotion perception persisted even after controlling for speaking style.
• A significant Talker × Style interaction was found for multiple emotion categories, including anger.
• Perceived anger was notably higher in clear speech for 85% of the talkers compared to conversational speech.

Conclusions:

• The impact of speaking style on perceived anger varies considerably among talkers.
• Clear speech, while intended to facilitate communication, may lead to unintended negative interpersonal consequences due to heightened perception of anger.
• Further research is warranted to identify the acoustic features contributing to perceived anger in clear speech.