Humans recognize emotional arousal in vocalizations across all classes of terrestrial vertebrates: evidence for acoustic universals

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Abstract

<p class="first" id="d9677142e365">Writing over a century ago, Darwin hypothesized that vocal expression of emotion dates back to our earliest terrestrial ancestors. If this hypothesis is true, we should expect to find cross-species acoustic universals in emotional vocalizations. Studies suggest that acoustic attributes of aroused vocalizations are shared across many mammalian species, and that humans can use these attributes to infer emotional content. But do these acoustic attributes extend to non-mammalian vertebrates? In this study, we asked human participants to judge the emotional content of vocalizations of nine vertebrate species representing three different biological classes—Amphibia, Reptilia (non-aves and aves) and Mammalia. We found that humans are able to identify higher levels of arousal in vocalizations across all species. This result was consistent across different language groups (English, German and Mandarin native speakers), suggesting that this ability is biologically rooted in humans. Our findings indicate that humans use multiple acoustic parameters to infer relative arousal in vocalizations for each species, but mainly rely on fundamental frequency and spectral centre of gravity to identify higher arousal vocalizations across species. These results suggest that fundamental mechanisms of vocal emotional expression are shared among vertebrates and could represent a homologous signalling system. </p>

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A brief guide to model selection, multimodel inference and model averaging in behavioural ecology using Akaike’s information criterion

Matthew Symonds, Adnan Moussalli (2011)

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Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: different channels, same code?

Patrik Juslin, Petri Laukka (2003)

Many authors have speculated about a close relationship between vocal expression of emotions and musical expression of emotions. but evidence bearing on this relationship has unfortunately been lacking. This review of 104 studies of vocal expression and 41 studies of music performance reveals similarities between the 2 channels concerning (a) the accuracy with which discrete emotions were communicated to listeners and (b) the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues used to communicate each emotion. The patterns are generally consistent with K. R. Scherer's (1986) theoretical predictions. The results can explain why music is perceived as expressive of emotion, and they are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on vocal expression of emotions. Discussion focuses on theoretical accounts and directions for future research.

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A framework for studying emotions across species.

David J. Anderson, Ralph Adolphs (2014)

Since the 19th century, there has been disagreement over the fundamental question of whether "emotions" are cause or consequence of their associated behaviors. This question of causation is most directly addressable in genetically tractable model organisms, including invertebrates such as Drosophila. Yet there is ongoing debate about whether such species even have "emotions," as emotions are typically defined with reference to human behavior and neuroanatomy. Here, we argue that emotional behaviors are a class of behaviors that express internal emotion states. These emotion states exhibit certain general functional and adaptive properties that apply across any specific human emotions like fear or anger, as well as across phylogeny. These general properties, which can be thought of as "emotion primitives," can be modeled and studied in evolutionarily distant model organisms, allowing functional dissection of their mechanistic bases and tests of their causal relationships to behavior. More generally, our approach not only aims at better integration of such studies in model organisms with studies of emotion in humans, but also suggests a revision of how emotion should be operationalized within psychology and psychiatry. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.