Citation

Trevor C, Arnal LH, Frühholz S. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 2020; 147(6): e540.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, American Institute of Physics)

DOI

10.1121/10.0001459

PMID

32611175

Abstract

One way music is thought to convey emotion is by mimicking acoustic features of affective human vocalizations [Juslin and Laukka (2003). Psychol. Bull. 129(5), 770-814]. Regarding fear, it has been informally noted that music for scary scenes in films frequently exhibits a "scream-like" character. Here, this proposition is formally tested. This paper reports acoustic analyses for four categories of audio stimuli: screams, non-screaming vocalizations, scream-like music, and non-scream-like music. Valence and arousal ratings were also collected.

RESULTS support the hypothesis that a key feature of human screams (roughness) is imitated by scream-like music and could potentially signal danger through both music and the voice.

Language: en