Voices of Anxiety: Do Voice Dynamics Reveal Anxiety Levels?
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2018-06-30
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en
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Understanding how anxious children change during treatment requires anxiety measurements. Since self-reported questionnaires for children are suboptimal, unobtrusive alternatives are examined. Both rigidity in physiological signals (e.g. heart rate) and changes in voice features have been related to anxiety. We investigated whether voice dynamics reflected children’s anxiety levels. Audio recordings of therapy sessions with children with anxiety (n = 41) and of conversations with control children (n = 41) were used. From every therapy session and conversation, audio segments about fear-related and neutral topics were selected. Children’s voices were analyzed with recurrence quantification analyses, providing information about structure and patterns in the signal. In general, control children had voices with lower recurrence measures than anxious children. Children who responded to treatment showed higher overall recurrence measures, but voice dynamics did not change over the course of treatment. Higher recurrence measures here indicate both high regularity and low predictability. These findings are difficult to interpret in light of earlier studies and express the need for research in more controlled settings to understand the relationship between voice dynamics and anxiety.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen