Fig. 1.

Oscillograms (top panels) and spectrograms (bottom panels) of the German sentence “Die ganze Zeit hatte ich ein Ziel” (“During all this time I had one goal”). The sentence is shorter when produced with a happy prosody (2 sec) than with a sad one (2.2 sec). The speech is also louder, as can be seen by comparing the sound envelopes illustrated in the oscillograms. This envelope is larger (i.e., it deviates more from baseline) for happy than for sad prosody. Spectral differences between happy and sad prosody are illustrated in the spectrograms. The dark shading indicates the energy of frequencies up to 5000 Hz. The superimposed blue lines represent the fundamental frequency (F0) contour, which is perceived as speech melody. This contour shows greater variability and a higher mean for happy than for sad prosody. Reproduced with permission (N°3277470398909) from Schirmer and Kotz (2006).