Reconsidering the Evolution of Nonlinguistic Communication: The Case of Laughter

Nonlinguistic communication is typically proposed to convey representational messages, implying that particular signals are associated with specific signaler emotions, intentions, or external referents. However, common signals produced by both nonhuman primates and humans may not exhibit such specificity, with human laughter for example showing significant diversity in both acoustic form and production context. We therefore outline an alternative to the representational approach, arguing that laughter and other nonlinguistic vocalizations are used to influence the affective states of listeners, thereby also affecting their behavior. In the case of laughter, we propose a primary function of accentuating or inducing positive affect in the perceiver in order to promote a more favorable stance toward the laugher. Two simple strategies are identified, namely producing laughter with acoustic features that have an immediate impact on listener arousal, and pairing these sounds with positive affect in the listener to create learned affective responses. Both depend on factors like the listener's current emotional state and past interactions with the vocalizer, with laughers predicted to adjust their sounds accordingly. This approach is used to explain findings from two experimental studies that examined the use of laughter in same-sex and different-sex dyads composed of either friends or strangers, and may be applicable to other forms of nonlinguistic communication.     

The Role of Rhythm and Pitch in the Evaluation of Human Laughter

Human laughter vocalizations are composed of highly variable sounds. We investigated the evaluation of laughter sounds and concentrated especially on the role of two acoustic features of laughter series: specific rhythms and changes in the fundamental frequency. Experimentally modified laughter series were evaluated using listener self-report data. Participants evaluated laughter series with differences in duration (Experiment 1), or in duration and frequencies (Experiment 2) of successive elements. Serial patterns with varying parameters received good ratings that were close to those received for natural laughter. By contrast, series with a stereotyped patterning received poor ratings. In addition, we found that self-report data strongly correlated to participants' direct behavioral reactions while listening to a specific stimulus. We suggest a three-part model to describe mechanisms underlying the evaluation of laughter.     

Laughter in Conversation: Features of Occurrence and Acoustic Structure

Although human laughter mainly occurs in social contexts, most studies have dealt with laughter evoked by media. In our study, we investigated conversational laughter. Our results show that laughter is much more frequent than has been described previously by self-report studies. Contrary to the common view that laughter is elicited by external stimuli, participants frequently laughed after their own verbal utterances. We thus suggest that laughter in conversation may primarily serve to regulate the flow of interaction and to mitigate the meaning of the preceding utterance. Conversational laughter bouts consisted of a smaller number of laughter elements and had longer interval durations than laughter bouts elicited by media. These parameters also varied with conversational context. The high intraindividual variability in the acoustic parameters of laughter, which greatly exceeded the parameter variability between subjects, may thus be a result of the laughter context.     

Affective Interaction as a Determinant of Musical Involvement*

Music may be understood as a structural representation, or symbolic “model,” of social interaction processes. Since music is a readily available expressive system in our society, individuals may use it as a socially meaningful symbolic medium within which they manage conflicting affective associations with interaction. Music listening then becomes one means by which individuals may maintain psychological well-being while adapting to complex social structures. Three initial points in this argument were examined, using high and low music listeners. High listeners were found to have more conflicting positive and negative affective associations with interaction than low or medium listeners, as measured by a TAT-type technique. The effect of role playing an affective interaction situation in an experimental design increased listening absorption in music for high but not for low listeners. High listeners were also more likely to describe musical effects in terms of symbolic participation in group processes.     

The Mirror to Our Soul? Comparisons of Spontaneous and Posed Vocal Expression of Emotion

It has been the subject of much debate in the study of vocal expression of emotions whether posed expressions (e.g., actor portrayals) are different from spontaneous expressions. In the present investigation, we assembled a new database consisting of 1877 voice clips from 23 datasets, and used it to systematically compare spontaneous and posed expressions across 3 experiments. Results showed that (a) spontaneous expressions were generally rated as more genuinely emotional than were posed expressions, even when controlling for differences in emotion intensity, (b) there were differences between the two stimulus types with regard to their acoustic characteristics, and (c) spontaneous expressions with a high emotion intensity conveyed discrete emotions to listeners to a similar degree as has previously been found for posed expressions, supporting a dose–response relationship between intensity of expression and discreteness in perceived emotions. Our conclusion is that there are reliable differences between spontaneous and posed expressions, though not necessarily in the ways commonly assumed. Implications for emotion theories and the use of emotion portrayals in studies of vocal expression are discussed.     

Perceptual dialectology in northern England: Accent recognition,geographical proximity and cultural prominence

Work in perceptual dialectology has argued that listeners’ successful identification of accent areas is facilitated by their geographical proximity to a particular region. Montgomery ( 2007 , 2012 ) argues that this proximity effect is mediated by a ‘cultural prominence’ effect, where localities of high cultural salience seem less distant. We explore these claims using an online survey in which listeners were asked to identify the regional origin of speakers of five accents from England's ‘linguistic north’ (Liverpool, Manchester, Crewe, Stoke‐on‐Trent and Macclesfield) from audio clips of four different sentences. We show that the proximity and cultural prominence effects are partially supported, and that the proximity effect is driven by listeners’ likely contact with/experience of the dialect in question. We also show that listeners react differently to different sentences in the same accent. While some sentences are identified correctly very often, others, even for culturally prominent locations with distinctive accents (i.e. Liverpool), are hardly ever correctly identified. We connect this to the geographical distribution of the linguistic features in the clips, and we argue that the presence, absence and range of individual linguistic features should be systematically considered in all perceptual dialectology work which uses audio stimuli.     

Perceptual identification of talker ethnicity in Vancouver English

Studies of ethnolinguistic variation typically begin by describing the speech production variables used to index social groups. In this study, we begin with indexical recognition – the perceptual identification of speakers’ self‐identified ethnic groups – to determine whether speakers produce ethnolinguistic variation and whether listeners are sensitive to it. Speech samples were recorded from thirty individuals from Metro Vancouver who self‐identified as Chinese, East Indian, or White Canadian. These utterances were used in a perception task where listeners categorized speakers’ ethnicities. Listeners’ social networks were labeled according to the ethnic group with which they reported spending the most time. Analyses indicate that while speakers vary in their productive expression of ethnolinguistic variation, listeners are consistent in their labeling choices. Listener accuracy was higher for voices from the listeners’ reported social group and White voices. These results suggest that familiarity with ethnic groups through social networks and mainstream culture influences indexical recognition.     

Perceptual,Attitudinal, and Behavioral Outcomes of Organization–Public Engagement on Corporate Social Networking Sites

This study proposes and tests a conceptual model that not only measures public engagement with corporate pages on social networking sites, but also evaluates the influence of such engagement on important perceptual, relational, and behavioral outcomes. Study results provide empirical evidence of the positive effects of public engagement on perceived corporate authenticity, organizational transparency, organization–public relationships, and public advocacy. Findings underscore the importance of public engagement via social media on enhancing perceived corporate transparency and authenticity, and thereby cultivating strong relationships. Additionally, organization–public relationships emerged as a deciding factor driving the effects of public engagement on advocacy behaviors.     

Gender,electrodermal activity,and videogames: Adding a psychophysiological dimension to sociolinguistic methods

User experience research on the affective dimensions of videogame players’ interactions has looked to psychophysiological measures as proxies for emotional states. We add to the growing body of literature on this topic and offer our research as a novel application to the methodological toolbox of sociolinguistics. We present a case study of an interaction occurring in a mixed‐gender group (3m/1f) playing a video game that has a potentially sexualized component in gameplay, using a Nintendo Wii‐mote joystick as a mimetic penis in the game Mario Party 8. Through a detailed analysis of (1) gameplay interaction, including talk, laughter and gesture, (2) participants’ electrodermal activity (EDA), and (3) a post‐game debriefing, we track the varied engagements of the players in‐game and with each other, showing how the design of the game itself and the entanglement of hardware and software design with gendered gameplay serve to marginalize and exclude the female participant.     

Human Non-linguistic Vocal Repertoire: Call Types and Their Meaning

Recent research on human nonverbal vocalizations has led to considerable progress in our understanding of vocal communication of emotion. However, in contrast to studies of animal vocalizations, this research has focused mainly on the emotional interpretation of such signals. The repertoire of human nonverbal vocalizations as acoustic types, and the mapping between acoustic and emotional categories, thus remain underexplored. In a cross-linguistic naming task (Experiment 1), verbal categorization of 132 authentic (non-acted) human vocalizations by English-, Swedish- and Russian-speaking participants revealed the same major acoustic types: laugh, cry, scream, moan, and possibly roar and sigh. The association between call type and perceived emotion was systematic but non-redundant: listeners associated every call type with a limited, but in some cases relatively wide, range of emotions. The speed and consistency of naming the call type predicted the speed and consistency of inferring the caller’s emotion, suggesting that acoustic and emotional categorizations are closely related. However, participants preferred to name the call type before naming the emotion. Furthermore, nonverbal categorization of the same stimuli in a triad classification task (Experiment 2) was more compatible with classification by call type than by emotion, indicating the former’s greater perceptual salience. These results suggest that acoustic categorization may precede attribution of emotion, highlighting the need to distinguish between the overt form of nonverbal signals and their interpretation by the perceiver. Both within- and between-call acoustic variation can then be modeled explicitly, bringing research on human nonverbal vocalizations more in line with the work on animal communication.     

Encoding-decoding of nonverbal emotional messages: Sex differences in spontaneous and enacted expressions

Male and female encoding-decoding of spontaneous and enacted nonverbal affective behavior was evaluated using the Buck (1977) slide-viewing paradigm. The eliciting stimuli were carefully selected and evaluated to insure a comparable emotional impact on both sexes, and all subjects received the same decoding task. Consistent with previous research, females were superior decoders overall. Also as predicted, females were superior encoders, principally when reacting spontaneously to the slides. Given no evidence of differential affective arousal, this sex difference for spontaneous encoding is interpreted to reflect differences in male-female display rules. Contrary to several previous findings spontaneous and enacted encoding measures were not strongly related, especially for males, where display rules may modify their spontaneous and enacted expressive behavior in comparison to females. There was no consistent positive or negative relationship between dimensional or category measures of encoding-decoding for either sex. Future investigations should separately evaluate encoding-decoding phenomena for each sex, employing more precise methods to evaluate the specific nonverbal behaviors actually important to the encoding-decoding communication process.     

Warm glow of giving collectively – An experimental study

We report on an experiment to test for a warm glow of giving collectively. Comparing subjects’ affective state before and after the experiment, we find that individual charitable donations create a feeling of warm glow while collective donations do not. Proposing to donate the full endowment collectively improves subjects’ affective state significantly, though the behavioral data suggests that this result cannot be explained by the notion of expressive voting. We also find that subjects who consider Kant’s Categorical Imperative to be an important guideline for individual decisions are more likely to donate the full endowment to charity. This result supports the notion of Kantian thinking as an independent factor explaining cooperative behavior (Roemer, 2014).     

Cue-Reactive Rationality,Visual Imagery and Volitional Control Predict Cue-Reactive Urge to Gamble in Poker-Machine Gamblers

Poker-machine gamblers have been demonstrated to report increases in the urge to gamble following exposure to salient gambling cues. However, the processes which contribute to this urge to gamble remain to be understood. The present study aimed to investigate whether changes in the conscious experience of visual imagery, rationality and volitional control (over one’s thoughts, images and attention) predicted changes in the urge to gamble following exposure to a gambling cue. Thirty-one regular poker-machine gamblers who reported at least low levels of problem gambling on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), were recruited to complete an online cue-reactivity experiment. Participants completed the PGSI, the visual imagery, rationality and volitional control subscales of the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), and a visual analogue scale (VAS) assessing urge to gamble. Participants completed the PCI subscales and VAS at baseline, following a neutral video cue and following a gambling video cue. Urge to gamble was found to significantly increase from neutral cue to gambling cue (while controlling for baseline urge) and this increase was predicted by PGSI score. After accounting for the effects of problem-gambling severity, cue-reactive visual imagery, rationality and volitional control significantly improved the prediction of cue-reactive urge to gamble. The small sample size and limited participant characteristic data restricts the generalizability of the findings. Nevertheless, this is the first study to demonstrate that changes in the subjective experience of visual imagery, volitional control and rationality predict changes in the urge to gamble from neutral to gambling cue. The results suggest that visual imagery, rationality and volitional control may play an important role in the experience of the urge to gamble in poker-machine gamblers.     

Voice quality as a marker of ethnicity in New Zealand: From acoustics to perception1

This study is the first acoustic analysis of voice quality in the two main ethnic dialects of New Zealand English. In a production experiment, narratives from 36 speakers were analyzed and H1‐H2 spectral tilt measures were calculated for each vowel. The results provide instrumental evidence for impressionistic claims about the differing voice quality features of the two main ethnic groups, showing that Maori English speakers are creakier than European New Zealanders. A perception experiment was also carried out to determine the perceptual salience of voice quality for the identification of speaker ethnicity. The results of regression analyses confirm that listeners are sensitive to the phonation differences, and are able to rely on phonation cues in an ethnic dialect identification task. The study demonstrates the role of voice quality as a critical sociolinguistic variable, and highlights the importance of listeners’ previous dialect exposure in terms of sensitivity to prosodic cues. Ko tēnei pūrongo te tirohanga tuatahi ki ētahi āhuatanga o te reo e puta ana i te korokoro o ngā kaikōrero o ngā reo ā‐iwi e rua o te Reo Pākehā i Aotearoa. I tētahi whakamātau i āta tirohia ngā oropuare o ētahi kōrero nō ngā kaikōrero 36, ā, kua tatauria ngā ine H1‐H2 e kīia ana ko te spectral tilt. Ko ngā putanga he taunakitanga mō ngā whakaaro o te tāngata e pā ana ki te rerekētanga o ngā reo o te hunga Pākehā me te hunga Māori, e whakaatu hoki ana he kekē atu te reo o ngā mea e kōrero ana i te ‘Māori English’ i te reo e kōrerohia ana e te iwi Pākehā. He whakamātau whakarongo i whakahaerehia kia kite mena he āwhina tēnei āhuatanga o te reo kia mōhio te kaiwhakarongo ko wai te iwi o te kaikōrero. Ko ngā whakaputanga o ngā tatauranga e kī ana kei te tino mārama tēnei āhuatanga o te reo e puta ana i te korokoro o te tāngata, ā, ka taea ēnei rerekētanga te whakamahi kia whakawehea te tangata Māori i te tangata Pākehā. Nā tēnei ka kitea he āhuatanga motuhake te reo o te korokoro, ā, he mea nui hoki mena kua tino wāia te kaiwhakarongo ki ngā reo ā‐iwi. [Māori]     

Listening in a Multilingual World: The Challenges of Second Language (L2) Listening

Research into language acquisition and oral language use was examined in order to identify key factors that contribute to the successful acquisition of second language (L2) listening ability. The factors were grouped into three major domains: affective, cognitive, and interpersonal. It is claimed that in each domain, proficient L2 listeners have developed strategies, that is, plans of conscious action, in order to address persistent challenges of L2 acquisition. For the affective domain, the strategies concern development of resilience in order to maintain long-term motivation and investment of identity as an active user of the L2. For the cognitive domain, the strategies involve relearning the phonological system of the L2 as an independent system in order to counteract native language influences and using compensation tactics to supplement the influences of semantic organization of one’s native language. For the interpersonal domain, the strategies involve accommodation to communication styles and a task orientation to interaction. Research is reviewed from cognitive psychology, neurolinguistics, pragmatics, bilingualism studies, and language pedagogy, with the aim of identifying particular obstacles faced by L2 listeners and practical approaches used to cope with them.     

Analysis of five acoustic correlates of laughter

Five acoustic characteristics of five operationally defined laugh responses and the habitual speech fundamental frequency (F₀) from each of 11 male college students are described in this study. Findings revealed a positive correlation between the means of laugh duration and number of intensity peaks. Analysis of variance performed between each of the three F₀ measures of laughter as well as the F₀ of habitual speech indicated differences in means were not statistically significant. A significant difference was found between the means of the habitual speech F₀ and the peak laugh F₀. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Group Cohesion and Homework Adherence in Multi‐Family Group Therapy for Schizophrenia

This study examined the relationship between levels of group cohesion, defined as whole group relationships, and between‐session therapeutic homework adherence in a multi‐family group therapy (MFGT) for people with schizophrenia. Participants from 18 consenting families attending MFGT groups completed weekly homework adherence ratings, group cohesion and spontaneous between‐session activity measures. Levels of group cohesion at each session were compared with measures of scheduled and spontaneous homework adherence reported at the next session. It was hypothesised that higher levels of group cohesion would be related to homework adherence and other spontaneous between‐session therapeutic activity completed by group members. Results show higher levels of group cohesion were associated with higher rates of spontaneous between‐session therapeutic activity. However, contrary to expectations no significant relationship between cohesion and scheduled homework completion was found. The implications of the findings for group processes and homework adherence are discussed.     

In a Nervous Voice: Acoustic Analysis and Perception of Anxiety in Social Phobics’ Speech

This study investigated the effects of anxiety on nonverbal aspects of speech using data collected in the framework of a large study of social phobia treatment. The speech of social phobics (N = 71) was recorded during an anxiogenic public speaking task both before and after treatment. The speech samples were analyzed with respect to various acoustic parameters related to pitch, loudness, voice quality, and temporal aspects of speech. The samples were further content-masked by low-pass filtering (which obscures the linguistic content of the speech but preserves nonverbal affective cues) and subjected to listening tests. Results showed that a decrease in experienced state anxiety after treatment was accompanied by corresponding decreases in (a) several acoustic parameters (i.e., mean and maximum voice pitch, high-frequency components in the energy spectrum, and proportion of silent pauses), and (b) listeners’ perceived level of nervousness. Both speakers’ self-ratings of state anxiety and listeners’ ratings of perceived nervousness were further correlated with similar acoustic parameters. The results complement earlier studies on vocal affect expression which have been conducted on posed, rather than authentic, emotional speech.     

The quantification of smiling using a microcomputer-based approach

This study examines the relationship between the ratings made of a set of smiling and neutral expressions and the facial features which influence these ratings. Judges were shown forty real face photographs of smile and neutral expressions and forty line drawings derived from these photographs and were asked to rate the degree of smiling behavior of each expression. The line drawings of the face were generated by a microcomputer which utilizes a mathematical model to quantify facial expression. Twelve facial measures were generated by the computer. Significant differences were found between the ratings of smile and neutral expressions. The Mode of Presentation did not contribute significantly to the ratings. Using the facial measures as separate covariates, five mouth measures and one eye measure were found to discriminate significantly between the ratings made on smile and neutral expressions. When entered as simultaneous covariates, only four mouth measures contributed to the differences found in the expression ratings. Future research projects which may utilise the computer model are discussedThe research reported in this paper was conducted in the Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide. The authors would like to thank Ulana Sudomlak for her assistance in the gathering and recording of the data for this project, and the reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.