Next friday: defense of my thesis

Short update: I defended my thesis successfully, just have to await my diploma before I can call myself officially Master of Science in Human-Technology Interaction (or something along these lines) ;)

I'm about to defend my thesis, if you are in the neighbourhood, you are welcome to visit it.

Titel: The Influence of the Auditory Environment on the Emotional Perception of Speech
Location: Eindhoven University of Technology, IPO building, room 1.18
Date: 16 May
Start: 14:00
Supervisors: Armin Kohlrausch (TU/e & Philips Research), Harm Belt (Philips Research), Dik Hermes (TU/e)

It is generally assumed that speech conveys information about how a person feels (see for an overview Scherer, 2003). Most communication, however, does not take place in isolation, in general there is context available as well. That context can play a role in the perception of emotion has been demonstrated before, e.g. by presenting expressive anchor faces next to a target face (Russel & Fehr, 1987), presenting various facial expressions together with an emotional utterance (de Gelder & Vroomen, 2000), or sharing or not sharing more about the relational situation when presenting an isolated utterance (Cauldwell, 2000).

Technologies have been developed at Philips Research that enable suppression of environmental sound in communication settings. Considering the effects of context on emotional perception, it was therefore interesting to look at the effects of these technologies on the emotional perception of the speaker. We arrived at the following hypotheses:

1. An auditory environment with a distinct emotional quality influences the perceived emotional quality of emotional speech
2. Speech recorded in noisy environments is perceived less neutral outside the noisy context; i.e. more negative and more aroused

One of these two hypotheses was confirmed, whereas the other was rejected. If you are curious, come and see my presentation next Friday (16th). Of course, also when you do know, or think you know, the outcome already, you're welcome to join the presentation, and discuss the results, and my interpretation of these.