Acoustic characteristics of vocal emotions simulated by actors

This paper reports on a set of acoustic measures of vocal emotions simulate d by a skilled actor and actress who read 12 short sentences. The emotions simulated were Neutral, Cold Anger, Hot Anger, Happiness, Sadness, interest , and Elation. Acoustic measures were examined for digitised samples of the 168 sentences (2 speakers x 12 sentences x 7 emotions). These measures inc luded the over-all mean energy, standard deviations of energy, mean fundame ntal frequency, mean values of the first six formant frequencies and their corresponding frequency bandwidths, mean durations of utterance, and mean a rticulation rare. Results displayed both similarities and differences in th e acoustic measures of che two actors' simulations of the different emotion s. These are presented and discussed.