Human listeners’ perception of behavioural context and core affect dimensions 
in chimpanzee vocalizations

Kamiloğlu, Roza G.; Slocombe, Katie E.; Haun, Daniel Benjamin Moritz; Sauter, Disa A.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.1148

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Human listeners’ perception of behavioural context and core affect dimensions in chimpanzee vocalizations

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Haun, Daniel Benjamin Moritz
Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Kamiloğlu, R. G., Slocombe, K. E., Haun, D. B. M., & Sauter, D. A. (2020). Human listeners’ perception of behavioural context and core affect dimensions in chimpanzee vocalizations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1929): 20201148. doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.1148.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0006-BBA0-2

Abstract

Vocalizations linked to emotional states are partly conserved among phylogenetically related species. This continuity may allow humans to accurately infer affective information from vocalizations produced by chimpanzees. In two pre-registered experiments, we examine human listeners' ability to infer behavioural contexts (e.g. discovering food) and core affect dimensions (arousal and valence) from 155 vocalizations produced by 66 chimpanzees in 10 different positive and negative contexts at high, medium or low arousal levels. In experiment 1, listeners (n = 310), categorized the vocalizations in a forced-choice task with 10 response options, and rated arousal and valence. In experiment 2, participants (n = 3120) matched vocalizations to production contexts using yes/no response options. The results show that listeners were accurate at matching vocalizations of most contexts in addition to inferring arousal and valence. Judgments were more accurate for negative as compared to positive vocalizations. An acoustic analysis demonstrated that, listeners made use of brightness and duration cues, and relied on noisiness in making context judgements, and pitch to infer core affect dimensions. Overall, the results suggest that human listeners can infer affective information from chimpanzee vocalizations beyond core affect, indicating phylogenetic continuity in the mapping of vocalizations to behavioural contexts.