1. The work depicted here was sponsored by the U.S. Army. Statements and opinions expressed do not necessarily
reflect the position or the policy of the United States Government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.!
Peter Khooshabeh, PhD
Voice Quality Correlates of Speaker
Cardiovascular State!
Joint work with: Stefan Scherer, William Ryan, C. Brooks Volkman,
Brett Ouimette, Marlo Verket, Jonathan Gratch, Jim Blascovich

2. The work depicted here was sponsored by the U.S. Army. Statements and opinions expressed do not necessarily
reflect the position or the policy of the United States Government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.!
Peter Khooshabeh, PhD
…. Or exploring the feeling of
“having my heart in my throat”!
Joint work with: Stefan Scherer, William Ryan, C. Brooks Volkman,
Brett Ouimette, Marlo Verket, Jonathan Gratch, Jim Blascovich

3. 3!
§ Refers to the timbre or coloring of a
voice!
§ Inherent aspect vs. communicative
aspect!
§ Dynamic shifts of VQ superimposed
for communication purposes!
§ Paralinguistic signal!
§ Attitude/Mood/Affective state!
§ Social factors (e.g. standing)!
§ Turn-management (e.g. in Finnish)!
Voice Quality: an Important Nonverbal Behavior!
33!
C. Gobl and A. Ni Chasaide, The role of voice quality in
communicating emotion, mood and attitude, Speech Communication,
pp. 189-212, 40, 2003.!

4. 4!
§ Glottal pulse effects voice quality!
§ Breathy/Lax (intimate, soft)!
§ Modal (moderate, often the habitual
voice)!
§ Tense (harsh, higher pitch)!
Breathy to Tense Voice Qualities!
44!

5. 5!
Measure of voice quality: peak slope!
§ Identifies glottal closure instances from glottal pulses!
§ Derived following wavelet based decomposition of speech
signal!
§ Peak slope is from regression line !
§ Values closer to zero indicate tense voices!
§ Available at: !https://github.com/covarep/! Kane and Gobl (2011)!

6. 6!
Voice quality and speaker physiology!
§ Little extant work looking at relationship between voice quality
and physiology in natural speech!
§ Orlikoff studied acoustic vocal characteristics in males of
different ages!
§ Task was to pronounce vowel /a/ at a comfortable pitch!
§ Older men with atherosclerosis had higher jitter compared to older
and younger healthy men!
§ Suggests that blood vessel capacitance effects laryngeal tissue,
inline with laryngoscopic assessment of senescence !
! ! ! ! ! ! !!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! (Orlikoff, 1990; Honjo & Isshiki, 1980)!

7. 7!
Research Question!
§ Does a speaker’s cardiovascular state predict
her voice quality in natural speech?!
§ Prediction:!
!
Baseline cardiovascular total peripheral resistance should
positively correlate with vocal tenseness.!

8. 8!
Biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat!
Challenge and Threat!
Challenge!
Resources >
Task Demands!
Sympathetic Adrenal Medullary
Axis Activation (myocardium
stimulation and epinephrine
release)!
!
Blood vessels dilate!
Threat!
Resources <
Demands!
!
Sympathetic Adrenal Medullary
Axis Activation!
!
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal
Cortical Axis Activation (cortisol
release)!
!
Blood vessels do not
dilate!
Blascovich and Tomaka (1996)!

9. 9!
Cardiovascular measures!
Cardiac
Output !
(CO)!
Total
Peripheral
Resistance
(TPR)!
Challenge !
Threat!
Task Engagement!

10. Blascovich, Vanman, Mendes, and Dickerson (2011)!

11. 11!
§ Baseline TPR is
significantly
correlated with
peak slope where
higher measures
indicate vocal
tenseness, !
!
r(95) = .537, p < .001!
!
Results!
Peakslope!
Total Peripheral Resistance!

12. 12!
Discussion!
§ First study of relationship between speaker cardiovascular
state and vocal tenseness!
§ Speakers with more vocal tenseness had increased baseline
levels of total peripheral resistance!
§ Future work to understand cardiovascular state from
nonverbal behavior!
§ Thanks to research assistants for data collection and ARL for
funding!