Acoustic data results
Hello everyone,
It is that time for another post. So last time I had left you off to explain the process of my acoustic analysis, and now we are finally here to discuss the results.
As a reminder, my acoustic data was categorized into two parts, a general plot-based data analysis and a more detailed analysis of “important” sentences based on my criteria. For the first part, sections of around 1-2 min of audio were divided based on the tone and plot point that they represented, and then some basic data (mean, max, min, range, SD), were recorded in terms of pitch and intensity.
As a reminder this was the scale:
Yellow– expository information/neutral tone
Pink– Rising action/excited tone
Red– most dramatic part/climax
Blue– resolution of some kind
Now when looking at these larger sections, the mean and standard deviation didn’t show much of a pattern, so these results were not significantly different. The range of intensity of pitch and intensity showed a clear pattern, with a larger range for pink sections, and a smaller range for red sections.
Now when looking at specific sentences in these sections, it became clear that there was a difference between the mean, SD, and range of red/pink sections vs the yellow sections. Specifically in the recordings of the 54-year-old and 11-year-olds recordings, where mean of pitch and intensity were higher for pink and red sections. These recordings also had the best structure of a story, with clear plot points that made the data easier to record.
Now the most exciting parts were when I was able to look at the specific words and points where the pitch and intensity has spiked, and how similar these patterns are among different ages. Here is an example:
As you can see, emphasizers like “just” and important parts of a sentence on words such as “died” experience a spike in intensity (green) as well as pitch(blue) in both graphs. These details help support the hypothesis that there is a significant influence in the storytelling styles throughout generations. There are many instances that will be analyzed in my paper, but the data will take another week to organize. So far, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of similarities in the young group (11-year-olds), and the older subjects (46–62-year-olds), while the middle group adopts a more neutral tone throughout.
Well, I hope you enjoyed looking at these exciting discoveries, next week I’ll be comparing the syntactical and acoustic data to make more detailed inferences. See you next week!