04.07.2022New L&M Course: Voice Analysis

Next to containing a linguistic message, voices play an essential role in human social interaction. Humans can recognize other individuals by their voice, rely on being recognized and recognition failure is a social misconduct that can lead to high embarrassment. Voices signal the emotional state, the fertility in females and help selecting the right mating partner. Voices are a key part of our personality and shape the trust we have in others. Non-speech information in voice has traditionally be viewed as noise in the speech signal that needs to be cancelled out. Recent research, however, shows that non-speech information in voice actually enhances speech communication.

The seminar can be booked by students at the Medical and the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zurich.

The objectives of this seminar are to understand (1) which information is encoded in the human voice (2) how multiple information can be encoded in voice simultaneously (3) how different types of information interact with each other (4) the different social functions of voice (5) how the knowledge about information in voice can be applied, for example in fields such as forensic voice analysis.

You can find more information on the Vorlesungsverzeichnis.