Reading Emotion in Voices

Post Reply New Topic

Listen to this video:


So most people are saying that she sounds monotone and unemotion, but I hear a clear edge to her voice suggesting that she is a bit upset, and a few other people in the comments picked up on it as well. I actually think I'm better at picking up on emotion in voice than most people, I can kinda tell when people are lying, or being patronizing or are angry but are trying to hide it, and I respond defensively when I hear any of those edges. I also tend to read texts with much better inflection than most people. But autistic people aren't supposed to be able to do either of these things. Maybe I'm just delusional, but I don't think that's actually the case at all, and rather I think some autistic people are hypersensitive to some emotional cues.

Can anyone else do this?

I am curruntly waiting for a Dx but to me she ( sounds like a boy) does not sound monotonous or emotionless and sounds generally affected by the missunderstandings. As for texts , don't all people struggle with the lack of tone? and sometimes missunderstand them depending on their currunt mood , using logic can usually discern inflection in texts.

As for lying I've felt that I've sometimes known something was wrong as I usually notice peoples "tells" but don't neccesarly know what the "tell" indicates.

It's a myth that autistic people sound monotonous, actually they tend to have a wider range of inflection than neurotypicals. It's just that the inflection is atypical, it doesn't correspond with how other people would associate it with the emotional that is supposed to be expressed.

Regarding a text, I think it's mostly a case that most people don't even try because they don't realize texts are SUPPOSED to be read with inflection. The tone is generally pretty unambigous from the word choice, context and punctuation, in some sense it's a myth that most information is nonverbal. I'm guessing most people just don't have enough practice picking up the subtext to realize most the information IS there.

the video posted in the OP indeed had noticable inflections, the voice was far from flat.
What these inflections mean, i don't know; i have to personally know a person before i can do that, allowing me to build a "soundboard" for them.

I think that i have picked up this skill as part of my musical training; i have developed my pitch-sensitivity to far beyond the average value, which as a side-effect gives me this inflection sensitivity as well.
I have learned to use this to mitigate my difficulties with reading facial expressions, to the point where they become hard to see

Each sentence seems to start at a relatively high pitch and go lower as it proceeds (albeit with some ups and downs on the way), which comes over as slightly monotonous to me (though it's clearly not the "all-at-one-pitch" kind of monotone) , and I've heard such a style described as a bad habit, but it seems to be a way of speaking that a lot of Americans use these days. Perhaps it's not surprising that a young, non-professional speaker wouldn't have particularly great intonation skills. All in all, it seems a tad unfair of them to highlight such a thing.

I sensed a bit of upset in the voice, possibly remorse and / or sorrow at the thought of having annoyed people, or discomfort at having to eat humble pie. It's difficult to know because in my experience people often sound slightly uncomfortable on recordings unless they're very experienced with the medium, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

The apology didn't seem very specific - mostly just about insensitivity and hurting people's feelings, and short-sightedness. But I presume those affected were aware of the specifics.

It sounds as if somebody edited out gaps here and there, and overdid it. That made it slightly harder to listen to, for me at any rate.

It's probably possible to "kind of" tell when people are lying, but nobody can be sure (polygraph tests are unreliable), and as the consequences of getting it wrong can be quite bad, observations based on tone of voice might be best viewed as mild evidence rather than proof.

I think that might be it. I listen to a lot of music, and I've gotten more sensitive to pitch. I've heard musicians have better "empathy" than non-musicians as a result of pitch sensitivity, and I've also heard of music therapy being used for children with autism based on the same reasoning (though many people with autism are already pitch sensitive).

I am not too sure but for me she doesn't seem monotone. Well. It sounded like this for a moment at first but soon changed. She is certainly doing some breaks in her speaking, as if she is thinking about the next word. And if you directly compare the voice at beginning and ending of the video you will probably hear it got slightly deeper, more nasal, slightly shaking - as if she was trying to hold tears. About half of the video I realized my eyes are getting tense too - my body reacted to the tone.

There is a chance people saying she sounded monotone were pointing out the fact she was trying not to get emotional, not that she was actually monotone. The way of speaking she choose was more monotone than average person would use while feeling the emotion she felt. She was emotional(might not be aware how much though) - but tried hard to hide it within a monotone voice. Most people voice would change way more.
She is probably used to controlling her emotions.

I could pick it up because that's exactly what I do when I get emotional.
I can hear my voice changes exactly as hers did.

Which is dumb, because exaggerating emotion is a sign of insincerity, not trying to hold them back. All this attitude is is classic misogyny.

I agree with the other posters; she sounds genuinely upset, but focused on getting her message across. There was a point where the voice was breaking a bit like she was going to cry.

Yes about starting each sentence high and then falling lower and lower - but in general she doesn't use the full range of her voice. She could have much more variety by hitting the higher notes. I read a newspaper article some time ago where some researcher mentioned that it was a trend among for ex vloggers to speak with a creaky voice, which is what she is doing at the end of some sentences. Apparently this is common among the young, female and educated.

The low range can also be cultural - I've noticed that a lot of Americans seem to force their voices into the lower register - but I thought it was more common among teenage boys and young men, in an attempt to sound more masculine.

It seems to me that part of the problem is infodumping. She has so many words to say that she doesn't have time to express them properly, so at the end of each sentence she is trying to get them out as fast as possible. I know someone who speaks exactly like this IRL. I've heard others say that their voice is monotonous, and hard to listen to, but I kinda don't get it. I guess I listen more to the content. But I've met another person IRL who really had a monotonous voice, and so help me God, I could not pay attention to anything they said.

Interesting. Any reason it's ex-vloggers rather than vloggers?

Hihi. Bad punctuation "For ex" = for example. Sorry

Okay, that makes more sense.