Human roars communicate upper-body strength more effectively than do screams or aggressive and distressed speech.

ABSTRACT: Despite widespread evidence that nonverbal components of human speech (e.g., voice pitch) communicate information about physical attributes of vocalizers and that listeners can judge traits such as strength and body size from speech, few studies have examined the communicative functions of human nonverbal vocalizations (such as roars, screams, grunts and laughs). Critically, no previous study has yet to examine the acoustic correlates of strength in nonverbal vocalisations, including roars, nor identified reliable vocal cues to strength in human speech. In addition to being less acoustically constrained than articulated speech, agonistic nonverbal vocalizations function primarily to express motivation and emotion, such as threat, and may therefore communicate strength and body size more ef

SUBMITTER: Raine J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6398857 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature