Development and validation of the Brazilian voice bank for various emotions (EMOVOX-BR)

To develop and validate the Voice Bank for Various Emotions for Brazilian Portuguese (EMOVOX-BR).

Observational and cross-sectional study. The corpus of this study consisted of 1,638 sound signals, in different speech tasks, produced by professional actors and actors in training, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (PT-BR). From these audios, those containing the phrase in PT-BR "look at the blue plane" in the variation of the six basic emotions plus neutral emission were selected. In the validation stage, the sample was composed of Brazilian speech-language pathologist judges, with experience in the area of voice, to perform the auditory-perceptual judgment of the voices to select the sound signals to compose and validate the EMOVOX-BR. They judged the identification and valence of the emotion, and which vocal parameters were most decisive in the recognition of emotions. Tests were used to verify intra- and inter-judge agreement and reliability.

EMOVOX-BR was made up of 39 audios, 24 male and 15 female voices. In the validation phase, all audios obtained a high accuracy rate in recognizing emotions from voice. The emotions anger, disgust and neutral were the most easily identified, with rates above 70%. The pitch and loudness parameters were the most relevant for recognizing emotions.

EMOVOX-BR is a pioneering voice bank in PT-BR, made up of 39 audios from native speakers, with variations in the six basic emotions and neutral emission.