Signaling with the Eyebrows – Commentary on Huron, Dahl, and Johnson
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Date
2009-07
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Empirical Musicology Review
Abstract
Huron, Dahl, and Johnson, in their paper “Facial Expression and Vocal Pitch
Height: Evidence of an Intermodal Association”, demonstrated a positive correlation
between the pitch of a sung note and the vertical position of the singer’s eyebrows.
Moreover, other subjects viewing photographs of the faces of the singers, with the lower part
of the face and neck of the singers blocked out, could accurately judge whether a high note
or low note had been sung. The authors offer a number of hypothetical explanations for their
findings. I propose a speculative, ethologically-based, explanation for these correlations:
namely, how both pitch of voice and eyebrow position would be correlated in this way to
convey to the viewer the degree of potential threat – or lack of threat – posed by the signaler.
Description
Keywords
pitch height, facial expression, aggression, intermodal perception
Citation
Empirical Musicology Review, v4 n3 (July 2009), 101-102