Sounds that exhibit roughness (coarse, grating sounding) ( Terhardt, 1974), such as alarming sounds like fire alarms and human screams, have been shown to activate that range of the MPS ( Arnal et al., 2015). The circles outline the temporal modulation range of 30 to 150 Hz. The MPS is a two-dimensional Fourier transformation of a soundwave that quantifies both temporal and spectral power modulations ( Elliott and Theunissen, 2009). (Color online) (A) Presented here are four MPS analyses of four audio recordings (from top left moving clockwise): a human scream, a non-screaming human vocalization (a held “ah” sound), a non-scream-like film music excerpt (T41), and a scream-like film music excerpt (T04). Vocal and artificial sounds exhibiting high temporal modulations in this range are perceived as particularly aversive ( Li et al., 2018), cause faster behavioral reactions ( Arnal et al., 2015 Ollivier et al., 2019), and increase neural responses in subcortical brain regions associated with aversive processing ( Arnal et al., 2019). Previous research indicates that human screams feature higher MPS values than non-alarming vocalizations in the 30 to 150 Hz range of the temporal modulation rate dimension of the MPS ( Arnal et al., 2015). For the purposes of this study, we employ the modulation power spectrum (MPS) method and parameters used by Arnal et al. Most models focus on amplitude modulation, especially in the broad region between 15 and 200 Hz. Roughness has been defined in various ways, and a number of models and operationalizations have been formulated ( Vassilakis and Kendall, 2010). Roughness is a basic auditory phenomenon that is characterized by a coarse, grating, or harsh subjective experience ( Terhardt, 1974). What acoustic features characterize the sound of a human scream? Typically, human screams are loud, utilize a wide range of frequencies, are higher in pitch than one's average vocal range, and have a high amount of roughness ( Arnal et al., 2015 Schwartz et al., 2019). Inspired by this branch of research and by the frequent comparison of scary music to human screams, the motivating question for the current study is: Do scream-like musical passages in scary film music actually mimic the sound of human screams to scare viewers? In humans, ethological signals can be smiling, crying, screaming, etc. Ethological signals are behaviors intended to communicate with a fellow member of one's species and cause them to react in a desired manner ( Ehret, 2006 Lorenz, 1939). These investigations are part of a branch of music and emotion research that theorizes that music might sometimes communicate emotion by mimicking human ethological vocal signals ( Juslin and Laukka, 2003 Blumstein et al., 2012 Bryant, 2013 Huron, 2015 Warrenburg, 2019). Recently, some music cognition researchers have begun to empirically investigate such instances of mimicry ( Huron and Trevor, 2017 Trevor and Huron, 2019). For example, a branch of music theory (topic theory) has a categorical label ( pianto) to describe music that mimics the sound of human weeping or sighs ( Mirka, 2014). Music has a long history of relying on vocal behaviors to describe musical ones.
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