On the development of the child's ability to identify affective state from the prosodic features of adult speech

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD'S ABILITY TO IDENTIFY AFFECTIVE STATE FROM THE PROSODIC FEATURES OF ADULT SPEECH

Piroska Klintbjer Åsa Nilsonne Greta Ågren

Linköping University

Departrnent of Conununication Studies SIC 9, 1984

LiU-Terna K-RB-84-9 ISSN 0280-5634 ISBN 91-7372-861-6

Address: Departrnent of Conununication Studies Linköping University

S-581 83 LINKÖPING Sweden

stället för traditionella akademiska discipliner. Det finns fyra teman: Hälso- och sjukvården i samhället, Kommunikation, Teknik och social förändring samt Vat-ten i natur och samhälle. Forskningen inom varje tema sker i samverkan mellan forskare med olika vetenskaplig balegrund. Verksamheten startade 1980 och efter en uppbyggnadspcriod om 6-7 år kommer varje tema att ha 20-25 fasta for-skartjänster - professorer, docenter etc - och cirka 40 forskarstuderande.

Tidigar e utgivna rapporter:

SIC 1 _{Linell, P.er. Modeller och metafore·r för kommunika} -tion. 1982. SIC 2 SIC 3 SIC 4 SIC 5 SIC 6 SIC 7 SIC 8 SIC 9

Linell, Per .The ~ritten Zanguage Bias ~n Linguistics. 1982.

Svensson, Cai Om_ Kqmmunikation, 1. Ett urval föredrag från tema-K:s symposium den 25-26 maj 1982. · 1982. ·

Gustavsson, L &

Hult, H {utg}

Text och bild i Z~romedel;· Sju ana -lyser av svenska som.andrr:ispråk. 1983.

Severinson Eklundh, ~erstin The Not~on ·of Language Game

-A Natural Unit ~f Dialogu~ and Discourse. 1983.

Granström, Kjell (red) Om Kommunikation, 2 .. Ett urval föredrag från tema-K:s

sym-posium den 26- 27 maj 1983 . 1983.

Hansson, Gunnar (red)

Nordenfelt, Lennart

Litteratur som korrnnmunikation: Förståelser,

tolkningar, värderingar. 1983.

Five studies in action theory. '1984.

Klintbjer, Piroska On the development of the child's ab1'.l7'.ty to identify affective state from the prosodic f eat-,~~-rrr / li,y ures of adult speech

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'11\/c ut-i'..J ISSN 0280- 5634

CONTENTS

Introduction

2 Material and methods 3

3 Results 5

3. 1 Sex diff erences ₅

3.2 Ontogeny ₅

3. 2.1 "Anger" 8

3.2.2 "Surprise'' 8

3.2.3 "Sadness" 8

3.2.4 "Happiness" 9

3.3 Judgements of the male and f emale voice 9

3.4 Judgements of the diff erent emotions 13

3.5 Misjudgements 13

4 Discussion 1 5

Addresses :

Piroska Klintbjer

Department of Communication Studies

University of Linköping

Åsa Nilsonne

Karolinska Institute

Department of Psychiatry S:t Görans Hospital Stockholm

Greta Ågren

Department of Zoology

The ability to judge emotional states (anger, surprise, sadness and happiness) from the non-verbal components of speech was studied in 169 children aged from 4 to 10 years (20-43 children per group, one group for each year of age except 9) in Uppsala, Sweden. 19 adults were used as a control group. The stimulus material consisted of speech samples, in which a male and a female actor had been in -structed to portray the indicated emotional states.

In general, the ability to make correct judgements increased with increased age. This was especially the case with the recognition of "surprise", "sadness" and "happiness", for which emotions increasing improvements were seen up to the age of 8, where the ability was close to that of the adult controls. The abil ity to recognise an angry voice appeared to be well developed already at the age of

4

.

The most difficult item was the male voice portraying "happiness", where the children did not show and increase in their scores until the age of 8. Girls were found to have a more developed ability to identify the expressed emotions in all age groups.

In most cases where erroneous judgements were made, the male voice was judged to be angry and the female to be sad, irrespective of

Human communication can be divided into verbal and non-verbal com

-ponents. The verbal component is expressed in words and sentences. Non-verbal vocal communication consists of the prosodic features of speech and vocal expressions as laughter, giggles, screams, sobbing etc. Non-verbal communication also includes body language, touch and chemical signals.

In the study of prosody the stress is on how something is said rath

-er than on what is being said, i.e. the information that can be transmitted through the intonation, pitch, amplitude and pauses of a speech sample.

The laryngeal muscles are under voluntary control which enables a speaker to modify his or her voice as for instance actors do. On the other hand, under conditions of emotional arousal, there is also a

non-voluntary influence on the voice mediated by changes in the breathing pattern and in the action of the laryngeal muscles. It has been suggested that the limbic system of the brain is involved in

these processes (Scherer 1979).

The fundamental frequency of the voice (pitch) is determined by the

interaction between the laryngeal and breathing muscles. Several reports have shown that the fundamental frequency contour varies with the emotional state of the speaker. For instance, speech tempo

is high in an angry or frightened voice, but slow in a sad voice.

Anger is loud, sorrow is quiet (Williams

&

Stevens 1972, Kotlyar

&

Morozov 1976, Scherer

&

Oshinsky 1977).

The prosodic qualities of speech can thus mediate information about emotional state. When studying this type of human communication, the prosody must be isolated from the verbal content of the utterance.

Many different methods have been developed to this end.

Test stimuli without linguistic content as for instance the alphabet have been used (Dusenbury

&

Knower 1939, Davitz

& Davitz

1959);

alternatively test sentences without emotional content - neutral

sentences - have been presented in different emotional modes

(Dimitrovsky 1964, Fenster

&

Goldstein 1971). The verbal content can

be masked by presenting only the fundamental frequency (Göranson et

al. 1981) or by using randomized splicing (Scherer 1971, Scherer et

al. 1972). Synthetic stimuli - electronically generated tones - can

be varied in a controlled way and have also been used in this kind

of investigations (Scherer et al. 1977).

Prosody is the dimension of language which is first discovered and

understood by children (Wood 1976).

Wood (1976) proposes five developmental stages in the child's under

-standing of prosody.

Stage 1

(4

months)

Stage 2 (18 months)

Stage 3 (2 1/2 yrs)

Stage 4 (5-12 yrs)

Rough recognition of the prosody in a happy

vs. unhappy voice.

Children exaggerate the intonation when they

begin to speak in order to make themselves

understood.

The prosody becomes complementary to the

linguistic context of the child's speech.

The child learns to identify a wider range

emotions with increasing reliability. Verbal

and non-verbal information can be understood

separately.

Stage 5 (after 12 yrs) The child learns to understand conflicting

messages, i .e. when the prosody does not

carry the same information as the verbal

content of the utterance.

The aim of this study was to study the ontogeny (Stage 4 according

to Wood) of the child's ability to identify different emotional

The specific Questions investigated were:

Are there sex differences in this ability?

How developed is this ability at different ages?

Is thc rnale and the female voice perceived in the same way?

Does identification of the different emotions present different degrees of difficulty?

2 Material and methods

A test tape (kindly provided by Anne-Marie Öster, Royal School of

Technology, Stockholm) containing recordings of a male and female actor reading six neutral sentences in four different emotional

modes was used. The emotions were: anger, surprise, sadness and

hap-piness. The sentences were: A. "Fröken kom för sent till skolan" (The teacher was late for school), B. "Bollen studsade in genom fönstret", (The ball bounced in through the window), C. "Det var Olle som vann tävlingen", (It was Olle who won the competition), D.

"Sommarlovet börjar sent i år", (Summer vacation begins late this

year), E. "De kommer på torsdag", ( They will arri ve on Thursday), and F. "Det finns en råtta i skafferiet", (There is a rat in the

larder). The tape was played to children and adult controls who were

asked to try to identify the emotional state of the speaker. Fach emotion was presented four times, the test thus consisted of 16

stimuli.

The children and the adult controls were provided with answer forms. For each sentence there were four possible answers of which only one

was correct. The sentences were played with intervals of 10 seconds

and the test lasted for approximately 10 minutes. The children were aged between

4

and 10 years (see table 1), they were recruited from

11 different groups of children at day care centers, pre-school and primary school.

Table 1.

Sex

Female Male

Age distribution of the children

4 5 15 9 15 15 30 24 Age (years) 6 10 10 20 7 11 11 22 8 20 23 43 1 O* Adul t ? ? 20 8 11 19 73 86 178

*

Data of sex distribution not available (data kindly provided by

A-M Öster.)

The

4

-

7

year old children were tested individually and they gave

their answers orally. The 8 and 10-year olds and the adult controls

were tested in groups and gave their answers on the forms provided

for them. The test session started with an oral instruction by the

test leader, the instructions were the same for every individual or

group. The children were shown schematic pictures of faces portray

-ing the emotions in question in order to make sure that they could

recognize and name the investigated emotions. After this there was a

short discussion about different means of expressing emotions. Four

practice sentences were played and evaluated together with the test

leader. Finally the test subjects were asked whether they had any

questions regarding the test procedure. When eventual questions had

been answered the test was administered as described.

In the statistical analysis the x2-test, Fisher's exact probability

3 Results

69% of the total amount of ratings were correct. The distribution of

correct and incorrect answers in relationship to sex and age is

shown in figs. 1-4 (see last page).

3.1 Sex differences

A comparison between the results obtained by the sexes within each

age group shows that the girls have an overall better score than the

boys (P<0.01) (table 2).

Table 2.

Sex

Female Male

Percentage correct answers within each age group in

relationship to sex.

4

51

47

5 55 59 Age (years) 6 76 69

7

73 73 8 92 82 71 67 Adults 99 93

The distribution of correct answers for girls and boys respectively

regarding the different emotional states as presented by the male

and the female voice is shown in fig 5. After the age of 7 the girls

have better scores than the boys as regards most emotional states.

This difference persists in the adult control group. The material is

not large enough to permit the difference to be proved statisti

-cally.

3.2 Ontogeny

The children achieve better scores the older they are (table 2) . The

difference between 4- and 5-year old girls is significant (P<0.01),

the same applies to the differences between 5- and 6-year olds

MALE VOICE

O/o

_ANGER

O/o

HAPPINESS

100

- - f : f - -~

100

o_

_

...

-

•

.-... ;;;>

•

80 ₀ 80 0

60

60

•

/ / / /

40

40 0 / / e/'.'.'.

•

2

0

20

/ / / ₀ 0 / / Il

_>

,,

/ dl

•

_I

>

'

4

5

6

7

8

years

/4

5

6

7

8 years

Females; r=0.95, df=4' p <0.01 Females; r=O .80, df=4. NS

Males

_•

r=0.89, df=4, p <0.05 Males _• r=0.30, df=4, NS

F

EMALE VO

I

CE

O/o

_ANGER

O/o

HAPPINESS

100

0

•

--

₁₀₀

-

-

o ...

-

. / ... ... ...

80

80

.» ...

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60

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40

40

20

20

ll

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'4

4

5

6

7

8

years

5

6

7

8

years Females; r=0.55, df=4, NS Females; r=0.94, df=4' p <0.01 Males r=0.43, df=4, NS Males ' r=0.95, df=4' p <0.01

Fig. 5. Percentage correct judgements relative to the age of the male ( 1

-and the female ( o ) subjects for the male and the female voice,

0

_/o

_SURPRISE

100

80

60

40

20

5

/ / / 0 ~ Q 0

•

6

7 Females; r=0.95, df=4, P <0.01 Males ; r=0.89, df=4, P <0.05 O/o

SURPRISE

1

00

80

/ / . / 0

60

. / . / /

.

/ 0 . / . /

40

. / / / 0

20

I

4

5

6

7

"

Females; r=0.83, df=4, P <0.05 Males ; r=0.95, df=4, P <0.01

MALE VO

I

CE

0

'

/

'>

8 years 0

_/o

_SAONESS

100

80

60

40

°

20

0

5

6

7

Females; r=0.50, df=4, NS Males ; r=0.98, df=4, P <0.01

F

EMALE VOICE

0

'>

8

years O/o

_SADNESS

1

00

•

<It:?" -?'

80

_/ / / /

60

/ / 9-/ 0

40

•

20

I 4

s

6

7

Females; r=0.96, df=4, P <0.01 Males ; r=0.88, df=4, P <0.05 0

'>

8

years

'>

8 years

the 6- and 7-year old girls. The 8-year old girls again have

sig-nificantly better scores than the 7-year olds girls (P<0.01 ). A

final improvement of the results can be seen between the 8-year old

girls and adult women (P<0.025).

Among the boys there is no difference between the results of the

4-and the 5-year olds. Between the ages of 5 and 6, however, there is

an increase in the number of correct ratings (P<0.05). Between 6

-and 7- year old boys there is no measureable improvement which cor

-responds to the findings among the girls. The 8-year old boys again

improve as compared to the 7-years olds (P<0.05). Finally the adult

men had a greater amount of correct ratings than the 8-year old boys ( P< O. 01 ) .

As the differences between the sexes were small , the results from

boys and girls have been pooled within each age group to allow

further statistical evaluation.

3. 2 .1 "Anger"

The "angry" voice of the male, as well as the female voice was

recognizable al ready to the 4-year olds (P<0.01). An improvement of

the ratings was seen at the age of 7 (P<0.05) . No further develop

-ment after that age was seen (fig

6)

.

3.2.2 11_Surprise"

The 4-year olds could also recognize both the male and the female

rendition of 11_{surprise" (P<0.05). This ability did not improve until}

the age of 6 (P<0.001). There was no significant difference between

the 6 and 7-year olds, but there was an improvement between the ages

of 7 and 8 (P<0.025). No further improvement was noted (fig 6).

"Sadness"

In the case of the male voice, it was not until the age of 8 that

the children were able to identify sadness correctly

The development then parallels that of "surprise" . An improvement

between the ages of 4 and 6 (P<0.05) but no difference between the

6- and 7-year old boys was found. Between the ages of 7 and 8 there

was again an amelioration of the results (P<0.05)(fig 6) .

The f emale voice was correctly assessed already by the 4-year olds

(P<0.001). There was a significant increase in correct answers at

the age of 5 (P<0.001 ). Another increase was seen between the ages

of 7 and 8 (P<0.01)(fig 6).

"Happiness"

The ability to identify the male voice portraying happiness was not demonstrated until the age of 8 (P<0.001). The female voice was cor

-rectly assessed already by the 4-year olds (P<0.001). The develop

-ment of the ability to correctly assess the female voice again

showed the same pattern as the ability to judge the surprised voice,

that is there was a difference between the results of the 4- and

6-year olds (P<0.001 ). There was not reliable difference between the

6- and 7-year olds but between the 7- and 8-year olds there was

another improvement (P<0.01) (fig 6).

3.3 Judgement of the male and femal e voice

66% of the judgements of the male voice were correct as cornpared to

71% of the judgements of the female voice. This constitutes a sig

-nificant difference (P<0.05) . Table 3 shows the results for the

various age groups as regards their ability to correctly recognize

O/o

ANGER

100

_ _ _ _ _ . . . - - - - .' 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 '

..

0

'

,'

•

M

o

•

.'.'~

..

..

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80

60

40

20

~'-'~--~----~--~~~--~~~--/~,~~----~~~....,._~

r

4

5

6

7

8

10

years ' / _Adults

~

O/o

_SURPRISE

100

80

60

40

20

I

>

I I I I I ,~....____.~_._~_._~_._~~--~~~~-r1

4

5

6

7

8

10

years Adults

Fi g. 6 Percentage correct judgements of the male (• --- ) and the

O/o

100

80

60

40

20

SADNESS

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ul-ts-~

0 /o

HAPPINESS

100

80

60

40

20

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IS

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···

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',_4"'---5'--__.6.____7.___8.__ _

_...10--ye-a-rs

_ __,, ,r---A-d-'-u-l

ts-~

Table 3.

Sex

Age (years)

Male voice

Fem ale voice

p Sex Age (years) Male voice Female voice p

Percentage of correct answers regarding the male

respectively female voice per sex and age group.

Female 4 5 6 7 8 Adults 34 52 78 62 90 98 53 57 74 82 93 100 <

o.

001 < 0.05 < 0.01 Male 4 5 6 7 8 Adults 35 39 66 62 83 94 45 62 72 81 82 95 < 0.001

From table 3 it can be seen that the female voice is more often cor-rectly identified than the male voice throughout the age groups. In

the cases where the differences are significant the P-values are entered into the table.

In a comparison between the ability of the boys and that of the girls to judge the male and the female voice, no difference could be found except in the case of the 8-year olds judging the female voice

where the girls had 93% right answers which is significantly better

3.4 Judgements of the different emotions

The "angry" voice was the easiest to identify (table 4), and "anger"

in the male voice was more readily identified than in the f emale

voice (P<0.01). The female voice portraying "sadness" and "happ

i-ness" were the next two most easily identified stimuli.The

differen-ces in judgements of the male and female "surprised" voice were not

significant.

Table 4 Percentage correct answers regarding the male and female voice in relation to the expressed emotions.

Expressed emotion "Anger"

Male voice 88 Female voice 80 p _<

o.

₀₁ "Surprise" "Sadness" 61 43 62 77 < 0.01 "Happiness" 33 68 < 0.01

The most difficult voices to identify were the male voice portraying

'1sadness" and "happiness". The "happy" male voice was correctly

identified less frequently than any of the other stimuli (P<0.001).

3.5 Misjudgements

On the whole the girls and the boys chose the same alternatives when

making incorrect judgements (figs 1-4). The boys aged 4-7 chose

11_anger11 _{as the main incorrect alternative to all the expressed emo}

-tions of the male voice (P<0.05). The girls have made similar

assessments, except in the case of "sadness" as expressed by the

male voice where "surprise" was the main wrong choice (P<0.05).

The female voice was in most cases judged to be expressing "sadness"

when a misjudgement was made. This applies to children of both sexes

200

100

0 1 2 time Is)

A. SURPRISE. HALE VOICE.

Fo !Hz)

200

~

100

0 1 2 time ( s)

B. ANGER. FEHALE VOICE.

Fo !Hzl

400

200

0 1 2 3 t i me ( s) C. SURPRISE. FEHALE VOICE.

F 0 <Hzl 200 100

_\

t

:;::... 0 1 2 time ( s)

0. SURPRISE. MALE VOICE.

Fo

200

~

100

0 1 2 time (s)

A. ANGER. MALE VOICE.

Fo !Hz) 200

V\!'!\

100 't~_._~~~--~~~ ... ~---> 0 1 2 time (s)

B. HAPPINESS. MALE VOICE.

F0 !Hzl 200

100

r.

0 1 2 3time(s)

C. SADNESS. FEMALE VOICE.

Fo (Hz) 200

J~

vJ

100 \

c

:;::... 0 1 2 3 4 time (s) D. SADNE SS. MALE VOICE.

Fig. 7. Fundamental frequencies (F

0) of some of the test sentences (A to D,

After the age of

7

there was no clear pattern in the choice of in

-correct alternatives.

The fundamental frequency (fig

7)

of the various test sentences has

been extracted in order to see if there were similarities between

the stimuli that were confused. The male voice, unlike the female

one, did not show a lesser variation of fundamental frequency in the

"sad" recordings. This could have made identification difficult, es

-pecially since the fundamental frequency contour was not much

dif-ferent from "surprise" and "anger" resp., although the mean fun

da-mental frequency was lower.

4

Discussion

The results of the present study were mostly in agreement with pre

-vious work. Firstly, the results of this investigation suggest that

girls are more successful in perceiving the non-verbal emotional

content of a spaken utterance than boys are. In studies where a larger number of persons were tested (Dimitrovsky 1964: N=225,

Rosenthal et al. 1978: N=2615) this sex difference was more pro

-nounced. However, in a pilot study of 163 persons Scherer

&

Oshinsky

(1977) did not find any difference between the sexes.

Secondly, the children improved in their ability to correctly assess

the emotional state of the speaker from year to year up to the age

of 8 at which age their scores did not differ from those of the

adult control group. These results are also in agreement with previ

-ous findings (Dimitrovsky 1964, Fenster et al 1971, Scherer

&

Oshinsky 1977, Rosenthal et al. 1978).

Thirdly, it was found that "anger" seemed to be more easily recog

-nized than "happiness", findings that coincide with those of

Dimitrovsky (1964), Kotlyar et al. (1976) and Rosenthal et al.

(1978). Scherer

&

Oshinsky (1977), on the other hand, finds "happi

Fourthly, when the children made misjudgements in this study,

"anger" and "sadness" were the most frequently chosen alternatives.

This is in agreement with Dimistrovsky's (1964) finding that, when mistakes were made, positive emotions were judged to be negative.

Finally, the results of this study suggest that the female adult voice was in general easier to interpret than the male voice, in

particular when expressing "sadness" and "happiness". The male voice communicated "anger" more successfully. This feature has not

pre-viously been reported. However, in this study the test sentences

were read by only one person of each sex. Thus, it cannot be estab

-lished whether the above-mentioned difference was due to sex diff-erences in general or individual differences between the actors.This aspect needs further investigation. A further methodological diffi -cul ty was that the emotional content of the sentences was simu

-lated. Possibly there is a difference in the acted and spontaneous expression of emotion. However, the present test sentences were interpreted by professional actors, trained to simulate emotions. Furthermore, the females in the adult control group gave correct answers to 99% of the stimuli, and adult men and girls of 8 years of

age gave correct answers to more than 90%. Thus, the actors ex

-pressed the sentences in a way that was easily interpreted by

adults. A related difficulty stems from the verbal content of the

sentences which the children may not have been able to disregard.

Thus, some sentences may not have appeared neutral to them. (E.g.

there's a rat in the larder)

-Investigators of prosody rarely discuss their results from a bio

-logical point of view. However, the physiological background of the

gradually improving ability to assess the prosodic qualities of an utterance has received attention in studies of neural development

(Wood 1976). The finding of several investigators, that girls begin

to talk earlier than boys do, and that they achieve better results

in tests of verbal skills such as spelling, language acquisition and vocabulary has also been discussed in this context (e.g. Freedman

1979). Thus, Freedman (op. cit.) relates these sex differences to differences in dominance between the two brain hemispheres. The left

hemisphere reportedly controls verbal tasks, while the right one

controls spatial tasks (Bogen 1969, Bower 1970, Dennis

&

Whitaker

1976). Kimura et al. (1967) showed that the left hemisphere becomes

dominant as regards speech 2 years earlier in girls than in boys.

The present findings can also be discussed in terms of a more g

en-eral biological perspective: especially in social species, that is

in species where individuals live in groups, the communication of

emotional state enables the different individuals to interact with

one another in an adequate way. The ability to encode and decode

emotional information can thus be discussed from the point of view of function against the background of the evolutionary past of human communication. There is a disagreement about many aspects of early

man and his predecessors, but hardly about his social nature. Thus

it seems likely that man had a well-functioning system for

communi-cation of important emotional states bef ore the development of

sym-bolic language. Language in this highly developed form is considered

to have become possible with the development of the neocortex; the

older system for vocal, non-verbal communication underlies and

colours speech production - especially in emotional situations

(Chevalier-Skolnikoff 1973).

Prosodic features of speech can thus be seen as expressions of this

primitive system - this can be illustrated by the communicative

pro-perties of the infants' cries. The crying becomes differentiated at

an early age allowing mothers to identify hunger, fear and

discom-fort. Tankova-Yampolskaya (1968) analyzed the intonation curves of

the newborn infant's cry and adult vocalizations in different

emo-tional states. She found that the intonation patterns when expres

-sing discomfort were identical. This is probably an effect of the

"buil t in" vocal communicati ve system as proposed by Darwin already

in 1872. However, the proficiency of the individual develops with

age through interactions with other individuals, which allows

lear-ning of the more complex and culturally determined forms of

For example, in social mammals, including primates such as man,

so-cial signals are involved in the establishment of dominant rank

orders which are of intrinsic importance to many aspects of social

life, e.g. in the distribution of food.

Relevant to the present investigation are the results of several studies of children born blind in different cultures. These studies

support the concept of an ability to express and interpret aggres

-siveness which is in evidence early in life and which does not seem

to reQuire learning. Our finding of a well developed ability to per

-ceive anger even in the youngest group of children

(4

years old) is

in accord with this concept. Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1976) also describes

how small children compete for the mother's breast, for food and

toys, and how they try to establish a rank order. Similarly, Palluk

and Esser (1971) report that children defend their rank already at

one to one and a half years of age.

The function of a rank order as a means of reducing the amount of o

-vert aggression depends on the ability to recognize the threat sig

-nals. In this context the observed well-developed ability of the

small child to recognize anger makes sense. Accordingly, m

isinter-pretation of "happiness" should involve lower risks than any

mis-interpretation of "anger". Hence, in case of uncertainty, an inter

-pretation of "anger" would be the safest alternative, which also

corresponds with the experimental results from this and other inves

-tigations.

However, the "angry" and the "happy" voice show many similarities as

to freQuency, pitch, volume and tempo (Scherer

&

Oshinsky, 1977). It

may therefore be difficult to judge whether a voice is "happy" or

"angry" from intonation only. In this context Van Hooff's (1972)

hypothesis concerning the phylogenetic development of laughter from

threat through signals of submission is interesting, If this is

true, the ability to show threat is the more primitive system.

Considering the importance of being able to encode and decode threat

chan-nels for signalling emotion - that is prosody, facial expression,

posture etc. should, each by itself, be sufficient to allow recogni

-tion of the threat. If the "happiness" signal did develop from a

threat the differences must be large enough to avoid confusion.

Pos-si bly, for this reason and the relative recency of this type of sig

-nal (van Hooff, op.cit.), the communication of "happiness" may re

-quire reinforcement via additional communicative channels. This ex

-plain why the children in this and other studies found it difficult

to identify the emotion "happiness" on the basis of the voice alone,

in particular in the male voice. However, not only "happiness", but

also "sadness" in the male voice was more difficult to recognize

than in the female voice. These sex differences could possibly be

attributed to the cultural bias against expressions of sadness in

males which could influence both the children and the male actor.

Thus some sex differences were found in communicative skills. These

differences can be discussed in terms of the social organization of

man. A social organization similar to that of e.g. hamadryas or

gelada baboons and chimpanzees has been considered to be relevant for early hominids. This is characterized by male aggressive domi-nance and longterm maternal care (Jolly 1972, Wilson 1975).

The longterm close proximity between the juvenile and its mother to

ensure its protection and nourishment also means, that the mother

will be of crucial importance in the socialization process. This

also applies to modern men. In this situation a superior

communicat-ive ability in females should be of value. The males may achieve

their goals by efficiently signalling and perceiving anger which is

in accord with our finding that the male voice was more efficient

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100% 100 °lo 100 °/o 100 °lo 100 °lo 100 °lo Adults 6 years 5 years

CORRECT ANSWERS

• female subjects

111

male subjects

INCORRECT ANSWERS

N N

An

Su Sa

Ha

An

MALE VOICE

Su Sa

Ha

FEMALE VOICE

4 years

_~

D

female subjects male subjects Fig 4. Happiness. Distribution of the answers among the alternative emotions anger (An), surpise (Su), sadness (Sa) and

happiness (Ha), when happiness was expressed. In each pair of bars the left bar represents the answers of the

100%

An

Su Sa

Ha

An

Su Sa

Ha

MALE VOICE

FEMALE VOICE

4

years

7

years

CORRECT ANSWERS

• female subjects

R

male subjects

INCORRECT ANSWERS

•

_D

fem ale su bjects male subjects

Fig. 1. Anger. Distribution of answers among the alternative emotions anger (An), surprise (Su), sadness (Sa) and

happiness (Ha), when angerwas expressed. In each pair of bars the left bar represents the answers of the female subjects and the right one the answers of the male subjects.

100 °lo 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% An Su Sa

Ha

An Su Sa

MALE

VOICE

FEMALE

VOICE

100% years 4 years

Ha

Adults

CORRECT ANSWERS

• fernale subjects • male subjects

INCORRECT ANSWERS

~

D

fernale subjects male subjects

Fig. 2. Surprise. Distribution fo answers among the alternative emotions anger (An) , surprise (Su), sadness (Sa) and happiness (Ha), when surprise was expressed. In each pair of bars the left bar represents the answers of the female subjects and the right one the answers of the male subjects.

100% 100 °lo

An

100 °lo 100 °lo

Su

Sa

MALE VOICE 100 °lo

Ha

100 °lo

An

Su Sa FEM AL E VO I C E 100% 5 years 4 years Ha Adults

CORRECT ANSWERS

• female subjects • male sub jects

INCORRECT ANSWERS

•

_D

female sub jects male subjects

Fig. 3. Sadness. Distribution of answers among the alternative emotions anger(An), surprise (Su), sadness (Sa) and

happiness (Ha), when sadness was expressed. In each pair of bars the left bar represents the answers of the