[Production-specific changes in emotional impression of speech: dimensions and acoustic correlates of impression...

The variations in the emotional impression arising within the time course of 60 utterances were examined. According to the similarities of these impressions, the utterances could be arranged within a two-dimensional space with changing structure. The first dimension referred to the contrasting poles of aggression and attraction (e.g., anger vs. tenderness). The second dimension referred to the contrasting poles of euphorical opening and defensive closing (e.g. joy vs. sadness, anxiety). The emotional dimensions of activity, valence and potency could be integrated. However, the orthogonality of the activity and valence dimension only developed in the course of time, and with increasing utterance length the discrimination of emotions on the valence dimension also increased. The quality of the emotional impression is nearly perfectly predictable from acoustical parameters. However, most of these parameters affect the perceived emotional impression only locally, in individual parts of the utterances. The correlations between the acoustical parameters and the quality of the emotional impression fluctuate widely when the utterance length increases.