Speech Adaptation and Physiological Responses: A Study on f0 and Skin Temperature

This study investigates f0 adaptation, skin temperature change, and the relationship between the two. While a growing number of studies have demonstrated that emotional reactions in humans lead to changes in their facial skin temperature, none of them have studied temperature change in conversational contexts. Here, we have tested whether a conversation’s degree of intimacy influences emotion such that it affects facial temperature and f0 adaptation—in terms of entrainment to interlocutor and f0 change due to the conversation topic. We also ask whether temperature change and f0 adaptation are related. In our data set of 38 participants in a between-subjects design, few speakers aligned on f0 to their partner, with no identifiable patterns. Regardless of their interlocutor, however, the speakers’ f0 median and standard deviation tended to decrease when they spoke about more personal topics. This adds to previous literature describing emotional speech prosody. The participants’ nose temperature was modulated by social emotion, but there was no relationship between temperature change and f0 adaptation. This suggests that, although the participants’ nose temperature was sensitive to the social dynamic, the emotional reactions driving thermal change do not seem to be the same leading to prosodic adaptation.