Children across cultures respond emotionally to the acoustic environment

Among human and non-human animals, the ability to respond rapidly to biologically significant events in the environment is essential for survival and development. Research has confirmed that human adult listeners respond emotionally to environmental sounds just as they understand the emotional connotations of speech prosody and music. However, it is unknown whether young children also respond emotionally to environmental sounds. Here, we report that changes in pitch, rate (i.e., playback speed), and intensity (i.e., amplitude) of environmental sounds trigger emotional responses in 4- and 5-year-old children, including sounds of human actions, animal calls, machinery, or natural phenomena such as wind and waves. This phenomenon was observed for children from the United States and China – countries with drastically different cultural traditions. We discuss theoretical frameworks that predict convergent emotional responses to music, speech, and environmental sounds, focusing on Charles Darwin’s hypothesis that speech and music originated from a common emotional signal system based on the imitation and modification of environmental sounds.

在人类与非人类动物中，对环境中具备生物学意义的事件做出快速响应的能力，是生存与发展的核心前提。已有研究证实，成年人类听众会对环境声音（environmental sounds）产生情绪反应，正如他们能够理解言语韵律（speech prosody）与音乐所承载的情绪内涵一般。然而，目前尚未明确幼儿是否也会对环境声音产生情绪响应。本研究报告显示，环境声音的音高、速率（即播放速度）与强度（即振幅）变化，会在4岁与5岁儿童群体中引发情绪反应，此类声音涵盖人类动作声响、动物鸣叫、机械声响，以及风、海浪等自然现象发出的声响。这一现象在来自美国与中国的儿童中均被观测到——这两个国家的文化传统截然不同。我们还讨论了可预测音乐、言语与环境声音引发趋同情绪反应的理论框架，重点聚焦于查尔斯·达尔文（Charles Darwin）的假说：言语与音乐起源于一套基于对环境声音模仿与改造的通用情绪信号系统。