Abstract
The present research investigated how the verbal content of synthetic messages affects participants’ emotional responses and the ratings of voice quality. 28 participants listened to emotionally worded sentences produced by a monotonous and a prosodic tone of voice while the activity of corrugator supercilii facial muscle was measured. Ratings of emotions and voice quality were also collected. The results showed that the ratings of emotions were significantly affected by the emotional contents of the sentences. The prosodic tone of voice evoked more emotion-relevant ratings of arousal than the monotonous voice. Corrugator responses did not seem to reflect emotional reactions. Interestingly, the quality of the same voice was rated higher when the content of the sentences was positive as compared to the neutral and negative sentences. Thus, the emotional content of the spoken messages can be used to regulate users’ emotions and to evoke positive feelings about the voices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Nass, C., Brave, S.: Wired for speech: How voice activates and advances the human-computer relationship. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2005)
Ilves, M., Surakka, V.: Subjective and physiological responses to emotional content of synthesized speech. In: Magnenat-Thalmann, N., Joslin, C., Kim, H. (eds.) Proc. of CASA, pp. 19–26 (2004)
Ilves, M., Surakka, V.: Emotions, Anthropomorphism of Speech Synthesis, and Psychophysiology. In: Izdebski, K. (ed.) Emotions in the Human Voice. Culture and Perception, vol. III, pp. 137–152. Plural Publishing Inc., San Diego (2009)
Partala, T., Surakka, V.: The effects of affective interventions in human-computer interaction. Interacting with Computers 16(2), 295–309 (2004)
Viswanathan, M., Viswanathan, M.: Measuring speech quality for text-to-speech systems: development and assessment of a modified mean opinion score (MOS) scale. Computer Speech and Language 19(1), 55–83 (2005)
Fogg, B.J., Nass, C.: Silicon sycophants: the effects of computers that flatter. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 46(5), 551–561 (1997)
Bradley, M.M., Lang, P.J.: Measuring emotions: the self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential. Journal of Behavioral Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 25(1), 49–59 (1994)
Larsen, J.T., Norris, C.J., Cacioppo, J.T.: Effects of positive and negative affect on electromyographic activity over zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii. Psychophysiology 40(5), 776–785 (2003)
Cacioppo, J.T., Petty, R.E., Morris, K.J.: Semantic, evaluative, and self-referent processing: memory, cognitive effort, and somatovisceral activity. Psychophysiology 22(4), 371–384 (1985)
Bitlips, http://www.bitlips.fi/index.en.html (retrieved March 30, 2011)
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., Zuccolotto, A.: E-Prime User’s Guide. Psychology software Tools Inc., Pittsburgh (2002)
Fridlund, A.J., Cacioppo, J.T.: Guidelines for human electromyographic research. Psychophysiology 23(5), 567–589 (1986)
Johnson-Laird, P.N., Oatley, K.: The language of emotions: an analysis of a semantic field. Cognition and Emotion 3(2), 81–123 (1989)
Ilves, M., Surakka, V.: Subjective emotional responses to synthesized speech with lexical emotional content: The effect of the naturalness of the synthetic voice. Submitted for publication in Behaviour & Information Technology (under review)
Bertels, J., Kolinsky, R., Morais, J.: Norms of emotional valence, arousal, threat value and shock value for 80 spoken french words: comparison between neutral and emotional tones of voice. Psychologica Belgica 49(1), 19–40 (2009)
Tassinary, L.G., Cacioppo, J.T.: The skeletomotor system: Surface electromyography. In: Cacioppo, J.T., Tassinary, L.G., Berntson, G.G. (eds.) Handbook of Psychophysiology, 2nd edn., pp. 163–199. Cambridge University Press, New York (2000)
Van Boxtel, A., Jessurun, M.: Amplitude and bilateral coherency of facial and jaw-elevator EMG activity as an index of effort during a two-choice serial reaction task. Psychophysiology 30(6), 589–604 (1993)
Doerksen, S., Shimamura, A.P.: Source memory enhancement for emotional words. Emotion 1(1), 5–11 (2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ilves, M., Surakka, V., Vanhala, T. (2011). The Effects of Emotionally Worded Synthesized Speech on the Ratings of Emotions and Voice Quality. In: D’Mello, S., Graesser, A., Schuller, B., Martin, JC. (eds) Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction. ACII 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6974. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24600-5_62
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24600-5_62
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24599-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24600-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)