Autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses have been considered a major component of the emotional experience, producing bodily sensations that are typically associated with what is known as the “feeling component” of an emotion. Voice is one of the most important means of expressing and perceiving emotions but the relationship between vocal expression and vocal perception of emotions and corresponding ANS responses has been under-investigated. In particular, it is not clear a) whether methods for detecting ANS responses during the vocal expression of emotions and/or the perception of emotions conveyed vocally by others differ in terms of their sensitivity and reliability; and b) the extent to which detected ANS responses correlates with the actual (subjective) self-experienced emotion.
Objective
In this pilot-study, we investigate the relationships between two objective measurements (skin conductance response (SCR) and pupillometry) and one subjective measurement (self-rated scale) relating to the emotional experience during three different vocal tasks: expressing emotions vocally; imagining the vocal expression of the same emotions; listening to and trying to empathize with the same emotions when conveyed vocally by others.
Methods
Data on physiological manifestations (SCR and pupillometry) and on subjective perception of emotional experience (self-rated scale) are being collected from 5 subjects who have a healthy voice and are familiar with vocal-expression activities (such as voice-artists, singers, actors) while they: a) produce brief, nonverbal vocalizations expressing different emotions (two positively valenced and two negatively valenced) as well as brief, nonverbal “neutral” vocalizations; b) imagine producing brief, nonverbal vocalizations expressing the same emotions as well as producing brief, nonverbal “neutral” vocalizations; c) listening to these vocalizations and trying to empathize with them.
Results
A correlation analysis of the objective and subjective measurements will be carried out for the various emotions and/or “emotion families”, and the sensitivity and reliability of the different methods will be investigated. Outcomes and limitations will be discussed.
Conclusions
The results of this pilot-study will contribute to refining methodological procedures for subsequent studies to be carried out in the context of the project “Listening to others’ emotions. Neural representations of empathy arising from emotional voices”, where data on ANS responses and on subjective perception of emotional experience will be collected simultaneously with data on the neural activity in the brain (using functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI).
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