Emotions perceived in music and speech: relationships between psychoacoustic features, second-by-second subjective feelings of emotion and physiological responses. Coutinho, E. & Dibben, N. In Luck, G. & Brabant, O., editors, 3rd International Conference on Music & Emotion, pages 1, 2013. University of Jyväskylä, Department of Music..
Emotions perceived in music and speech: relationships between psychoacoustic features, second-by-second subjective feelings of emotion and physiological responses [pdf]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
There is strong evidence that the structure of affective responses to auditory stimuli is largely dependent on dynamic temporal patterns in low-level music structural parameters. Previous studies have shown that spatiotemporal dynamics in a small set of psychoacoustic features can predict two fundamental psychological dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal. The study reported here aims to determine the extent to which specific physiological responses can be used in tandem with psychoacoustic cues to predict emotional responses to music as well as to speech. In a behavioural study collected two main types of data: continuous ratings of emotion perceived while listening to extracts of music and speech, using a computer interface which modelled emotion on two dimensions (arousal and valence), and physiological measures (respiration, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, and blood pressure) taken while listening to each stimulus. Then we analysed the existence of linear and non-linear correlations and associations between psychoacoutic features extracted from music and speech, physiological activity, and self-reported arousal and valence. For both domains, we found very strong correlations showing that physiological measures and psychoacoutic cues account for a large proportion of the variance in the reported arousal and valence. Strong correlations also emerged between psychocoutic cues and physiological responses, suggesting a possible route for the elicitation of subjective feelings. When comparing music and speech directly we found that while the significant changes to physiological measures for speech stimuli are confined to a small number of features, the physiological responses for music are much more diffuse across the various measures.

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