01.06.2021 Kasia Pisanski

Much like the vocalisations of other animals, the human voice has been shaped over evolutionary time by natural and sexual selection. Our voices are further shaped by social and sensory experiences accumulated over the lifetime of each individual. As such, the human voice conveys a great diversity of biologically and socially relevant information in its non-linguistic acoustic features. Yet to date, most research on nonverbal vocal communication in humans has focused on static individual differences in indexical cues during speech production. This traditional approach has largely overlooked crucial elements of vocal communication, particularly our capacity to voluntarily modulate vocal parameters within a much broader acoustic space than that used for modal speech, and the striking parallels between the nonverbal vocalisations of humans (such as cries, screams, laughs and groans) and the affective vocalisations of other animals. Using a multi-disciplinary comparative framework, my research programme aims to reveal the extent to which the form (acoustic structure) of nonverbal vocal signals maps onto their apparent evolved function (e.g., effects on listeners). In this talk I will present data from several recent and ongoing studies examining form-function mapping in human vocalisations, from aggressive 'roars' to pain cries, that together provide compelling evidence that human vocalisations, much like those of other animals, function to communicate and often exaggerate evolutionarily relevant information. 

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