ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
Predicting strength from aggressive vocalizations versus speech in African bushland and urban communities.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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10 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Speak or shout? Nonverbal vocalizations promote rapid detection of emotions in vocal communication.PloS one · 2026Article
- Three evolutionary functions of human music: predator defense, obtaining food, preparation for war.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Humans need auditory experience to produce typical volitional nonverbal vocalizations.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Comparing accuracy in voice-based assessments of biological speaker traits across speech types.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Music as aposematic signal: predator defense strategies in early human evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Roughness perception: A multisensory/crossmodal perspective.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022Review
- Vocal Cues to Male Physical Formidability.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Hearing the physical condition: The relationship between sexually dimorphic vocal traits and underlying physiology.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Predicting strength from aggressive vocalizations versus speech in African bushland and urban communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 7 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The human voice carries information about a vocalizer's physical strength that listeners can perceive and that may influence mate choice and intrasexual competition. Yet, reliable acoustic correlates of strength in human speech remain unclear. Compared to speech, aggressive nonverbal vocalizations (roars) may function to maximize perceived strength, suggesting that their acoustic structure has been selected to communicate formidability, similar to the vocal threat displays of other animals. Here, we test this prediction in two non-WEIRD African samples: an urban community of Cameroonians and rural nomadic Hadza hunter-gatherers in the Tanzanian bushlands. Participants produced standardized speech and volitional roars and provided handgrip strength measures. Using acoustic analysis and information-theoretic multi-model inference and averaging techniques, we show that strength can be measured from both speech and roars, and as predicted, strength is more reliably gauged from roars than vowels, words or greetings. The acoustic structure of roars explains 40-70% of the variance in actual strength within adults of either sex. However, strength is predicted by multiple acoustic parameters whose combinations vary by sex, sample and vocal type. Thus, while roars may maximally signal strength, more research is needed to uncover consistent and likely interacting acoustic correlates of strength in the human voice. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part I)'.
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