Prosodic Elements for Content Delivery in Broadcast Journalism: A Quantitative Study of Vocal Pitch

Individuals verbally express meaning not only through speech sounds and words but also prosodically through the pitch, loudness, and tempo of their voice. Through a quantitative analysis, this exploratory study examined the prosodic elements of mean pitch, pitch variability, and pitch range in a sample of 450 voice-overs and throws from 90 male and female broadcast reporters and anchors from larger markets across the United States. Findings indicate that compared to typical speakers in the general population, male broadcasters actually speak with an elevated mean pitch, more pitch variability, and use more range. However, female broadcasters were found to speak at slightly lower mean pitch levels when compared to other female speakers in the general population (but like males with more variability and range). It is hoped that this study will serve as a starting point in moving broadcast vocal coaching from that of just an art to a bit more of a science.

M248. VOICE PATTERNS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC REPLICATION OF PREVIOUS META-ANALYTIC FINDINGS

Background Schizophrenia (SCZ) has been associated to distinctive voice since its first definitions. Distinctive voice patterns are often associated with core negative symptoms and with social impairment. They may thus represent markers of the disorder. A recent meta-analysis identified weak atypicalities for pitch variability, and stronger atypicalities in duration (speech percentage, pause duration and speech rate). However, heterogeneity across studies was large, most of the studies underpowered (small sample and no repeated measures) and replications across studies almost nonexistent. In addition, there is a lack of cross-linguistic studies comparing voice and linguistic patterns in SCZ across different languages to assess whether the patterns are distinctive of SCZ in general, or specific to linguistic and/or cultural groups. In the present study, we aim to advance the understanding of voice patterns in SCZ by collecting and analyzing a cross-linguistic corpus of repeated voice measures. Such corpus enables us to systematically assess the replicability of previous meta-analytic results, better accounting for between and within participant variability, as well as cross-linguistic differences. Methods We collected a Danish (DK), Chinese (CH) and Japanese (JP) cross-linguistic dataset involving 163 participants with SCZ (105 DK, 51 CH, 7 JP) and 173 matched controls (HC) (117 DK, 43 CH, 13 JP) for a total of 3851 audio-recordings. Data were collected using the Animated Triangle 1 2020 Congress of the Schizophrenia International Research Society Task. Voice recordings were preprocessed using consolidated algorithms (Covarep, Praat) to extract the following features, in order to compare results with the effect sizes (ES) of previous meta-analysis (MA): 1) Duration measures (speech rate, duration of utterance, number of pauses, pause duration), as well as 2) pitch and intensity (mean and variability). To investigate differences between SCZ and HC, we ran multilevel regression models with the acoustic feature as outcome, diagnosis (SZ, HC) and language (DK, JP, CH) as predictors, and varying effects by participant and corpus. Predictors were scaled in order to allow comparison with meta-analysis ES. Results We were only able to partially replicate previous findings. The meta-analysis found: 1) lower pitch variability, replicated for JP only (β= -1.25, SE = 0.37, p < .001); 2) lower speech rate replicated for DK only (β= -0.23, SE = .08, p < .01); 3) increased pause duration replicated for DK (β= 0.29, SE = .08, p < .001) and JP (β= 0.59, SE = .30, p < .05); 4) lack of evidence for atypical number of pauses replicated for DK, JP and CH; 5) lack of evidence for atypical duration of utterance replicated for CH and JP (DK presented higher duration: β= 0.01, SE = 0.01, p < .01); 6) lower proportion of spoken time, not replicated; 7) lack of evidence for pitch mean, replicated for DK, but higher in CH (β= 0.37, SE = .18, p < .05), and lower in JP (β= -1.46, SE = .41, p < .001). Discussion We found only partial replication of previous meta-analytic findings for reduced pitch variability, increased pause duration and lower speech rate, with ES generally smaller than in previous meta-analysis. On the contrary, we were not able to replicate previous findings of lower proportion of spoken time. Estimations of ES were largely affected by different languages, and replications held only for specific languages (pitch variability for JP, speech rate for DK, and pause duration for DK and JP). This indicates the important role that linguistic factors may play in originating vocal patterns in SCZ. Voice patterns seem not to be distinctive of SCZ in general, but bounded to linguistic/cultural differences. Future studies should better investigate how different acoustic and linguistic features interact in originating atypical voice patterns in SCZ.

Quantifying Player-Induced Intonation Errors of the Steel String Acoustic Guitar

Data from a previously published study on same-note pitch variability of the steel string acoustic guitarwere subjected to additional analysis to isolate and quantify the sources of intonation error. Pitch error componentsassociated with the construction of the guitar, the player’s tendency to play sharp, and the player’s tendency to pitchvariability were identified and isolated by simple arithmetic operations. The player-associated error components werefound to be substantially related to the fret being played. Per-player sharping tendency values for the G string rangedfrom 0 – 4 cents on fret #1, 0 – 6 cents on fret #5, and 0 – 10 cents on fret #12. Per player pitch variability meanvalues ranged from 0 – 2 cents on fret #1, 1 – 4 cents on fret #5, and 1 – 7 cents on fret #12. Quantifying player-associated pitch error tendencies may be useful in optimizing an instrument’s intonation for that player.

Exploring the association of infant receptive language and pitch variability in fathers’ infant-directed speech

The objective of this study was to examine the links between prosodic features of paternal Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) and child characteristics. Pitch variability measures were extracted from the speech samples of 50 fathers during unstructured play with their two-year-old children. Evidence for a link between child receptive language ability (measured by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development III) and fathers’ pitch variability was obtained from Multiple Hierarchical Regression. Findings support the hypothesis that fathers tailor their speech to their children. This is one of the few studies to examine the relationship between fathers’ IDS and child language ability.

Short-term Recognition of Timbre Sequences

The goal of the current study was to explore outstanding questions in the field of timbre perception and cognition—specifically, whether memory for timbre is better in trained musicians or in nonmusicians, whether short-term timbre recognition is invariant to pitch differences, and whether timbre dissimilarity influences timbre recognition performance. Four experiments examined short-term recognition of musical timbre using a serial recognition task in which listeners indicated whether the orders of the timbres of two subsequently presented sound sequences were identical or not. Experiment 1 revealed significant effects of sequence length on recognition accuracy and an interaction of music training and pitch variability: musicians performed better for variable-pitch sequences, but did not differ from nonmusicians with constant-pitch sequences. Experiment 2 yielded a significant effect of pitch variability for musicians when pitch patterns varied between standard and comparison sequences. Experiment 3 high-lighted the impact of the timbral dissimilarity of swapped sounds and indicated a recency effect in timbre recognition. Experiment 4 confirmed the importance of the dissimilarity of the swap, but did not yield any pertinent role of timbral heterogeneity of the sequence. Further analyses confirmed the strong correlation of the timbral dissimilarity of swapped sounds with response behavior, accounting for around 90% of the variance in response choices across all four experiments. These results extend findings regarding the impact of music training and pitch variability from the literature on timbre perception to the domain of short-term memory and demonstrate the mnemonic importance of timbre similarity relations among sounds in sequences. The role of the factors of music training, pitch variability, and timbral similarity in music listening is discussed.

Same-Fretted-Note Intonation Variability of the Steel String Acoustic Guitar

Ten experienced guitar player subjects were recruited to play twenty notes each at fret positions 1, 5 and 12 on the G string of a typical steel string acoustic guitar with typical string set and setup. The notes were digitally recorded and analyzed for pitch errors. Summary statistics of the pitch errors were calculated for each note and for each note/subject. Data was displayed graphically for visual examination. Results indicate variability across subjects and across notes tested. Results for the entire subject population show pitch variability of ±2 cents from mean value for each of the three notes at one standard deviation from mean, indicating variability of ±2 cents from mean value for ≈68% of samples and of ±4 cents from mean value for ≈95% of samples.