Experimental study of affect bursts

The study described here investigates the perceived emotional content of “affect bursts” for German. Affect bursts are defined as short emotional non-speech expressions interrupting speech. This study shows that affect bursts, presented without context, can convey a clearly identifiable emotional meaning. Affect bursts expressing ten emotions were produced by actors. After a pre-selection procedure, “good examples” for each emotion were presented in a perception test. The mean recognition score of 81% indicates that affect bursts seem to be an effective means of expressing emotions. Affect bursts are grouped into classes on the basis of phonetic similarity. Recognition and confusion patterns are examined for these classes.