Humans need auditory experience to produce typical volitional nonverbal vocalizations.

ABSTRACT: Human nonverbal vocalizations such as screams and cries often reflect their evolved functions. Although the universality of these putatively primordial vocal signals and their phylogenetic roots in animal calls suggest a strong reflexive foundation, many of the emotional vocalizations that we humans produce are under our voluntary control. This suggests that, like speech, volitional vocalizations may require auditory input to develop typically. Here, we acoustically analyzed hundreds of volitional vocalizations produced by profoundly deaf adults and typically-hearing controls. We show that deaf adults produce unconventional and homogenous vocalizations of aggression and pain that are unusually high-pitched, unarticulated, and with extremely few harsh-sounding nonlinear phenomena compared t

SUBMITTER: Pisanski K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11332021 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature