Can People Perceive Different Emotions from a Non-emotional Voice by Modifying its F0 and Duration?

Forty-four stimuli were made from the unemotional utterance “eh” with duration changes (4 levels) and range of F0 (11 levels). Ten adult participants were asked to judge if the stimuli were congruent with the contexts (disagreement, hesitation, and agreement). Stimuli with rising tones tended to be identified as “surprise.” On the other hand, stimuli with falling tones were identified as “postponement” when their duration was long, and were identified as “affirmation” when their duration was short. The results indicated that the duration and the ranges of F0 should be effective in identifying the contexts in which they were spoken.