Data for: Prosodic alignment toward emotionally expressive speech: Comparing human and Alexa model talkers

This study tests whether individuals vocally align toward emotionally expressive prosody produced by two types of interlocutors: a human and a voice-activated artificially intelligent (voice-AI) assistant. Participants completed a word shadowing experiment of interjections (e.g., “Awesome”) produced in emotionally neutral and expressive prosodies by both a human voice and a voice generated by a voice-AI system (Amazon’s Alexa). Results show increases in participants’ word duration, mean f0, and f0 variation in response to emotional expressiveness, consistent with increased alignment toward a general ‘positive-emotional’ speech style. Small differences in emotional alignment by talker category (human vs. voice-AI) parallel the acoustic differences in the model talkers’ productions, suggesting that participants are mirroring the acoustics they hear. The similar responses to emotion in both a human and voice-AI talker support accounts of unmediated emotional alignment, as well as computer personification: people apply emotionally-mediated behaviors to both types of interlocutors. There were small differences in magnitude by participant gender, the overall patterns were similar for women and men, supporting a nuanced picture of emotional vocal alignment.本研究旨在检验个体是否会在语音层面对齐两类对话者所产生的富有情感表现力的语音韵律：人类对话者与语音激活型人工智能（voice-AI）助手。参与者完成了一项感叹词语音跟读实验，实验所用感叹词（如“Awesome”）分别由人类语音以及语音人工智能系统（亚马逊Alexa）生成，且涵盖情感中性与情感富有表现力两种韵律类型。结果显示，当面对情感表现力较强的语音时，参与者的词语时长、平均基频（f0）以及基频变化量均有所提升，这与个体向通用“积极情感”语音风格的对齐程度升高相一致。不同说话者类别（人类 vs. 语音人工智能）下的情感对齐存在小幅差异，该差异与模型说话者语音产出的声学特征差异相平行，表明参与者正在镜像模仿其所接收到的声学信号。人类与语音人工智能说话者在情感响应上的相似性，为无中介情感语音对齐理论以及计算机拟人化理论提供了支持：即人们会对两类对话者均施加受情感调节的行为。参与者性别所带来的效应幅度存在小幅差异，但男女的整体响应模式相似，这为情感语音对齐现象提供了一幅更为细致入微的图景。