Spatial location and emotion modulate voice perception

How do we perceive voices coming from different spatial locations, and how is this affected by emotion? The current study probed the interplay between space and emotion during voice perception. Thirty participants listened to nonverbal vocalizations coming from different locations around the head (left vs. right; front vs. back), and differing in valence (neutral, positive [amusement] or negative [anger]). They were instructed to identify the location of the vocalizations (Experiment 1) and to evaluate their emotional qualities (Experiment 2). Emotion-space interactions were observed, but only in Experiment 1: emotional vocalizations were better localised than neutral ones when they were presented from the back and the right side. In Experiment 2, emotion recognition accuracy was increased for positive vs. negative and neutral vocalizations, and perceived arousal was increased for emotional vs. neutral vocalizations, but this was independent of spatial location. These findings indicate that emotional salience affects how we perceive the spatial location of voices. They additionally suggest that the interaction between spatial ("where") and emotional ("what") properties of the voice differs as a function of task.
This work was supported by grant numbers IF/00334/2012 and PTDC/MHC-PCN/0101/2014 awarded to APP. These Grants werefunded by the Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - FCT, Portugal) and FEDER (Euro-pean Regional Development Fund) through the European pro-grammes QREN (National Strategic Reference Framework) and COMPETE (Operational Programme “Thematic Factors of Compe-titiveness”). During the preparation of the manuscript, CFL wassupported by an FCT Investigator [grant number IF/00172/2015]. This study was conducted at CIPsi, University of Minho,and additionally supported by FCT [grant number PSI/01662] and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology andHigher Education through national funds and partially byFEDER through COMPETE 2020 under the PT2020 PartnershipAgreement [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653]