Voice cues in emotional expression among older Korean speakers

초록

This study investigates vocal emotion expression among older Korean speakers, focusing on differences between middle-aged (50-59) and elderly (80+) groups. Using data from the “Answering Questions” section of spontaneous speech in a large-scale corpus (Ok and Kim 2024), we analyzed 1,097 speakers—622 middle-aged and 475 elderly. Acoustic features, including fundamental frequency (F0), harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), shimmer, and speech rate (voiced segments per second), were extracted using OpenSMILE with the eGeMAPSv02 feature set. Emotion labels (neutral, negative, and positive) were pre-assigned through a rigorous three-stage annotation process, ensuring consistency and reliability. We examined how these features interact with demographic variables in expressing emotional states. The results from multinomial logistic regression revealed significant interactions between acoustic features, age, and gender. Across both age groups, faster speech and higher HNR were linked to positive emotion, while higher F0 showed a negative association. Speech rate predicted positive emotion most strongly in middle-aged male speakers, whereas in elderly males, faster speech was associated with a reduced or flat probability of positive classification. In contrast, female speakers showed a consistent moderate positive association between speech rate and positive emotion across both age groups, suggesting less age-related divergence. Shimmer also predicted negative emotion only in middle-aged speakers, indicating age-specific use of vocal irregularity in affective expression. These findings suggest that even among older adults, middle-aged and elderly speakers may express emotions differently through speech. The results highlight the importance of considering both physiological aging and evolving social identities when examining emotional expression in later life.

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