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Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions

Singing involves vocal production accompanied by a dynamic and meaningful use of facial expressions, which may serve as ancillary gestures that complement, disambiguate, or reinforce the acoustic signal. In this investigation, we examined the use of facial movements to communicate emotion, focusing...

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Autores principales: Quinto, Lena R., Thompson, William F., Kroos, Christian, Palmer, Caroline
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4010790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24808868
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00262
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author Quinto, Lena R.
Thompson, William F.
Kroos, Christian
Palmer, Caroline
author_facet Quinto, Lena R.
Thompson, William F.
Kroos, Christian
Palmer, Caroline
author_sort Quinto, Lena R.
collection PubMed
description Singing involves vocal production accompanied by a dynamic and meaningful use of facial expressions, which may serve as ancillary gestures that complement, disambiguate, or reinforce the acoustic signal. In this investigation, we examined the use of facial movements to communicate emotion, focusing on movements arising in three epochs: before vocalization (pre-production), during vocalization (production), and immediately after vocalization (post-production). The stimuli were recordings of seven vocalists' facial movements as they sang short (14 syllable) melodic phrases with the intention of communicating happiness, sadness, irritation, or no emotion. Facial movements were presented as point-light displays to 16 observers who judged the emotion conveyed. Experiment 1 revealed that the accuracy of emotional judgment varied with singer, emotion, and epoch. Accuracy was highest in the production epoch, however, happiness was well communicated in the pre-production epoch. In Experiment 2, observers judged point-light displays of exaggerated movements. The ratings suggested that the extent of facial and head movements was largely perceived as a gauge of emotional arousal. In Experiment 3, observers rated point-light displays of scrambled movements. Configural information was removed in these stimuli but velocity and acceleration were retained. Exaggerated scrambled movements were likely to be associated with happiness or irritation whereas unexaggerated scrambled movements were more likely to be identified as “neutral.” An analysis of singers' facial movements revealed systematic changes as a function of the emotional intentions of singers. The findings confirm the central role of facial expressions in vocal emotional communication, and highlight individual differences between singers in the amount and intelligibility of facial movements made before, during, and after vocalization.
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spelling pubmed-40107902014-05-07 Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions Quinto, Lena R. Thompson, William F. Kroos, Christian Palmer, Caroline Front Psychol Psychology Singing involves vocal production accompanied by a dynamic and meaningful use of facial expressions, which may serve as ancillary gestures that complement, disambiguate, or reinforce the acoustic signal. In this investigation, we examined the use of facial movements to communicate emotion, focusing on movements arising in three epochs: before vocalization (pre-production), during vocalization (production), and immediately after vocalization (post-production). The stimuli were recordings of seven vocalists' facial movements as they sang short (14 syllable) melodic phrases with the intention of communicating happiness, sadness, irritation, or no emotion. Facial movements were presented as point-light displays to 16 observers who judged the emotion conveyed. Experiment 1 revealed that the accuracy of emotional judgment varied with singer, emotion, and epoch. Accuracy was highest in the production epoch, however, happiness was well communicated in the pre-production epoch. In Experiment 2, observers judged point-light displays of exaggerated movements. The ratings suggested that the extent of facial and head movements was largely perceived as a gauge of emotional arousal. In Experiment 3, observers rated point-light displays of scrambled movements. Configural information was removed in these stimuli but velocity and acceleration were retained. Exaggerated scrambled movements were likely to be associated with happiness or irritation whereas unexaggerated scrambled movements were more likely to be identified as “neutral.” An analysis of singers' facial movements revealed systematic changes as a function of the emotional intentions of singers. The findings confirm the central role of facial expressions in vocal emotional communication, and highlight individual differences between singers in the amount and intelligibility of facial movements made before, during, and after vocalization. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-04-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4010790/ /pubmed/24808868 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00262 Text en Copyright © 2014 Quinto, Thompson, Kroos and Palmer. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Quinto, Lena R.
Thompson, William F.
Kroos, Christian
Palmer, Caroline
Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
title Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
title_full Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
title_fullStr Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
title_full_unstemmed Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
title_short Singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
title_sort singing emotionally: a study of pre-production, production, and post-production facial expressions
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4010790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24808868
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00262
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AT palmercaroline singingemotionallyastudyofpreproductionproductionandpostproductionfacialexpressions