Sex-related communicative functions of voice spectral energy in human chorusing

Music is a human communicative art whose evolutionary origins may lie in capacities that support cooperation and/or competition. A mixed account favoring simultaneous cooperation and competition draws on analogous interactive displays produced by collectively signalling non-human animals (e.g., crickets and frogs). In these displays, rhythmically coordinated calls serve as a beacon whereby groups of males “cooperatively” attract potential female mates, while the likelihood of each male competitively attracting an actual mate depends on the precedence of his signal. Human behaviour consistent with the mixed account was previously observed in a renowned boys choir, where the basses—the oldest boys with the deepest voices—boosted their acoustic prominence by increasing energy in a high-frequency band of the vocal spectrum when girls were in an otherwise male audience. The current study tested female and male sensitivity and preferences for this subtle vocal modulation in online listening t..., , , # Sex-Related Communicative Functions of Voice Spectral Energy in Human Chorusing

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vthn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vthn)

This document describes the code and data files used for analyses reported in the main manuscript and the Supplementary Material.
The manuscript presents data on human listener sensitivity and preference for sex-related modulations of voice quality in choir singing.

## Description of the data and file structure

There are two sets of analyses.

Analysis Set 1 addresses the stimulus audio analyses reported in the Supplementary Material and shown Figure 1 in the main manuscript.

Analysis Set 2 addresses the analyses of online listener ratings for the sensitivity study and the preference study.

## Sharing/Access information

Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data:

* [https://osf.io/xpqwy/](https://osf.io/xpqwy/)

## Code/Software

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**SET 1: STIMULUS AUDIO ANALYSES**
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