Pitch determines the level of influence on listener perception, physiological arousal, attention, and memory, according to new research published in Human Communication Research (June 2017). Professors at the Communication Department and Department of Translation and Language Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Institute for Communication Research at Indiana University conducted the joint study to examine intonation’s impact on interpersonal influence with self-report analyses and memory tests.
BIOPAC’s BioNomadix helped the researchers discover the psychophysiological signs of comprehension and autonomic arousal. Physiological data aided the researchers in understanding participant attention, offering an objective analysis of the participant’s experience. Each participant identified as female and listened to both narrative and informative commercials, with varying intonation, while wearing BIOPAC’s technology. The participants' retention and cognitive processing suggest that tone does affect interpersonal influence. Commercials, with a unique level of intonation (or the most varying), proved to have the highest standards of influence. The more varying in pitch or tone, the more likely participants were to process and recall information in the commercials. BIOPAC’s BioNomadix allowed the researchers to record wireless EDA from the participants, capturing electrical responses to communication within participants to improve understandings of effective communication. Specifically, BioNomadix wirelessly recorded response data from a wearable transmitter to measure the arousal and attention of participants by capturing their skin conductance response after exposure to stimuli. This type of research will continue evolving media communication and interpersonal influence systems for anyone interested in effective communication strategies. The study’s breakthrough research offers an incentive for further study into the cognitive processing of audio communication.
