Description

Like many other animals, humans produce nonverbal signals including screams, grunts, roars, cries and laughter across a variety of contexts. Many of these signals (such as cries) are already produced at birth and are likely to serve a number of important biological and social functions. In addition, human speech is characterized by nonlinguistic acoustic parameters (such as pitch, formant frequencies, and nonlinear phenomena) that are known to correlate with biologically important traits of the vocalizer.

Due to their acoustic structure, nonverbal vocalizations and valanced speech (e.g., yelling) are also likely to elicit predictable physiological, perceptual or behavioural responses in the receiver of the signal (the listener).

However, while a number of playback studies have examined behavioural responses (e.g., ratings) of listeners when exposed to various voice stimuli, very few studies have examined whether such behavioural responses are accompanied by an underlying physiological response. This is critical if researchers are to gain a comprehensive understanding of the broad range of mechanisms and the evolved functions of acoustic communication.

Therefore, in this research, investigators will examine specifically how exposure to vocal stimuli affects both the cognitive and biological responses of the listener.