Many animal vocalizations contain nonlinear acoustic phenomena as a consequence of physiological arousal. In humans, nonlinear features are processed early in the auditory system, and are used to efficiently detect alarm calls and other urgent signals. Yet, high-level emotional and semantic contextual factors likely guide the perception and evaluation of roughness features in vocal sounds. Here we examined the relationship between perceived vocal arousal and auditory context. We presented listeners with nonverbal vocalizations (yells of a single vowel) at varying levels of portrayed vocal arousal, in two musical contexts (clean guitar, distorted guitar) and one non-musical context (modulated noise). As predicted, vocalizations with higher levels of portrayed vocal arousal were judged as more negative and more emotionally aroused than the same voices produced with low vocal arousal. Moreover, both the perceived valence and emotional arousal of vocalizations were significantly affected by both musical and non-musical contexts. These results show the importance of auditory context in judging emotional arousal and valence in voices and music, and suggest that nonlinear features in music are processed similarly to communicative vocal signals.

中文翻译：

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声音环境调节感知的声音情绪

由于生理唤醒，许多动物的发声包含非线性声学现象。在人类中，非线性特征在听觉系统的早期得到处理，并用于有效检测警报呼叫和其他紧急信号。然而，高级情感和语义上下文因素可能会指导人声中粗糙度特征的感知和评估。在这里，我们检查了感知的声音唤醒和听觉上下文之间的关系。我们在两种音乐环境（干净吉他、失真吉他）和一种非音乐环境（调制噪声）中，向听众展示了不同程度的非语言发声（单个元音的叫喊声）。正如预测的那样，与低声调产生的相同声音相比，具有较高声带唤醒水平的发声被判断为更消极，更情绪化。此外，发声的感知效价和情感唤醒都受到音乐和非音乐背景的显着影响。这些结果表明听觉上下文在判断声音和音乐中的情绪唤醒和效价方面的重要性，并表明音乐中的非线性特征的处理类似于交际声音信号。