THE VOICE AND EYE GAZE

Question 1

THE VOICE

Answer 1

intrapersonal-behaviour affects someone else
interpersonal- behaviour affects ourselves

THE VOICE: 
speech content (v)
speech style(nv)
speech tone(nv)

Question 2

STYLE OF SPEECH

Answer 2

SPEECH RATE: speech rate varies with cognitive load

RESPONSE LENGTH: an indicator of deceprion detection

SPEECH LATENCY: how much time passes before responding to a conversation
longer latency=higher cognitive load

PAUSES: gaps in speech, can be filled/unfilled

SPEECH ERRORS:more speeches error occur with higher cog load

Question 3

RECOGNISING VOICES

Answer 3

we recognise voices by focusing on AGE,GENDER & ETHNICITY

People are thought to be good at recognising anger and
sadness, but not happiness (Juslin & Laukka, 2003)

People are not good at recognising shame or guilt, often confusing this for sadness

People are sometimes good at recognising disgust and sometimes not

Question 4

STUDY: RECOGNISING VOICES

Answer 4

Simon-Thomas, Keltner, Sauter, Sinicropi-Yao, & Abramson (2009) examined how well people could identify emotions from ‘vocal bursts’

10 speakers produced 5 sounds to depict a series of negative and positive emotions.
Participants were then asked to listen to sounds and match them with the correct emotion, for both positive (study 1) and negative (study 2) emotions.

RESULT: Participants were very good at recognise emotions just from these sounds
For both emotions, participants were better at recognising emotions from females.

Answer 5

INTERPERSONAL BENEFIT:
Our tone of voice can be used to emphasis certain parts of speech
Our voice can signal communicative intentions to others (as a social tool) (Owren, Rendall & Backorowski, 2003)
However, do we really intend to communicate information through speech style?

INTRAPERSONAL BENEFIT:
Some people like the sound of their own voice (!)
Laughter and crying can elicit internal reactions (Neuman & Strack, 2000)
However, are facial expressions a surrogate for these behaviours?

Question 6

CONSIDERATION

Answer 6

here are some methodological problems with some of this research:

Ecological validity issues (Simon-Thomas et al, 2009; Pittom & Scherer, 1993; Kurod, Hujiwara, Oamura, Utsuki, 1979)
Voices are not as universal as facial expressions
Voices are not as easy to measure as facial expressions
There are limited practical benefits of studying tone of

Question 7

EYE GAZE

Answer 7

In conversation, we spend a lot of
time focusing on the listener’s face
To comprehend detailed linguistic phonetic information from the mouth
To signal interest and engagement
As it is a ‘biologically inherent’ focal point

When communicating with someone live face-to-face, we typically spend around 90-95% of the time looking at the face (Gullberg & Holmqvist, 1999, 2006). (In comparison, gestures are rarely fixated in conversation.

Question 8

MANIPULATING EYE GAZE

Answer 8

However, we can manipulate whether
some fixate a gesture:

Through deictic expressions (Streeck & Knapp, 1992)
When a gesture is suspended in mid-air (Kendon, 1980)
Performing a gesture outside ‘central space’ (McNeill, 1996)
Performing a speaker-fixated gesture (Gullberg & Kita, 2009)

McNeill differentiates between central space (a space bounded by the speaker’s shoulders, waist and torso) and peripheral space (outside this area)

Question 9

FUNCTION OF EYE GAZE IN THINKING

Answer 9

Two main theories on why closing our eyes / looking away helps us to
think:
Cognitive Load Hypothesis (Glenberg, 2007)
 It allows us to focus our cognitive resources on a task that would
otherwise be spent processing information in the environment
Modality-Specific Interference Hypothesis (Wagstaff et
al, 2004)
 It allows us have a blank visual slate that we can use to visualise
information more clearly
If cognitive load is supported, eye closure will improve
memory for both visual and auditory information
If modality specific interference is supported, eye closure will
only improve visual information

Question 10

CONT.

Answer 10

Compared the performance of participants on a visual/audio memory tasks with their eyes closed or when looking at a blank screen
 4 Conditions: Eye closure, blank screen (control), visual distraction, audio distraction
If all that is needed to complete a verbal task is to ‘see nothing’, there should be no difference between eye closure and blank screen conditions
 Which theory would this support?
However, if effects were observed between eye closure and blank screen, eye closure has additional benefits for cognitive load
 Which theory would this support?

Question 11

CONT.

Answer 11

People tend to look up when trying to 
remember something, or perform 
another cognitive task. 
 Why do they do this?
 NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) 
suggests that looking up ‘engages’ the 
area of the brain required to process that 
information
 Other theories suggest that we do so 
simply to remove stimulus from the 
environment and focus our thinking

People tend to look away or close their eyes when asked to complete a
difficult task (Doherty-Sneddon & Phelps, 2005)
 People do better on cognitive tasks when doing so (Wagstaff et al, 2004)
 People do better in eyewitness interviews when doing so (Perfect,
Andrade & Eagan, 2011; Vredeveldt, Hitch & Baddeley, 2011)
 In fact, People are now encouraged to this in eyewitness interviews
(Fisher & Gieselman, 1992)

Answer 12

Top-down fixation, bottoms-up fixation