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Voice analysis for the measurement of anxiety
Author(s) -
Smith G. A.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
british journal of medical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.102
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 2044-8341
pISSN - 0007-1129
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1977.tb02435.x
Subject(s) - anxiety , psychology , measure (data warehouse) , stress (linguistics) , microtremor , audiology , clinical psychology , cognitive psychology , psychiatry , computer science , medicine , engineering , linguistics , data mining , philosophy , civil engineering
A recently developed technique for the acoustical analysis of speech is described. Speech is analysed electronically for the presence or absence of a microtremor having a frequency of about 10 Hz. This tremor is said to be attenuated in states of psychological stress. The paper presents data supporting the validity of this as a measure of anxiety, using states of both normal and pathological anxiety. An objective scoring system is proposed to overcome some of the problems of unreliability. A number of practical advantages of the voice technique are described.