In music, emotions are encoded in a range of acoustic attributes, including contour, modality, pitch height, intensity, tempo, and rhythm (for a review, see Juslin and Sloboda, 2010). Perceivers are sensitive to the information contained in these channels of communication and can decode emotional signals produced by individuals within and across cultures ( Russell et al., 2003 Thompson and Balkwill, 2010).

The findings confirm the central role of facial expressions in vocal emotional communication, and highlight individual differences between singers in the amount and intelligibility of facial movements made before, during, and after vocalization.Д®motional communication has been investigated in many different modalities including facial expressions ( Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002), tone of voice ( Johnstone and Scherer, 2000), music ( Juslin and Laukka, 2003 Gabrielsson and LindstrГ¶m, 2010), and gestures associated with music performance ( Davidson, 1993 Thompson et al., 2005 Vines et al., 2006).

Exaggerated scrambled movements were likely to be associated with happiness or irritation whereas unexaggerated scrambled movements were more likely to be identified as вЂњneutral.вЂќ An analysis of singers' facial movements revealed systematic changes as a function of the emotional intentions of singers. Configural information was removed in these stimuli but velocity and acceleration were retained. In Experiment 3, observers rated point-light displays of scrambled movements. The ratings suggested that the extent of facial and head movements was largely perceived as a gauge of emotional arousal. In Experiment 2, observers judged point-light displays of exaggerated movements. Accuracy was highest in the production epoch, however, happiness was well communicated in the pre-production epoch. Experiment 1 revealed that the accuracy of emotional judgment varied with singer, emotion, and epoch. Facial movements were presented as point-light displays to 16 observers who judged the emotion conveyed. The stimuli were recordings of seven vocalists' facial movements as they sang short (14 syllable) melodic phrases with the intention of communicating happiness, sadness, irritation, or no emotion. In this investigation, we examined the use of facial movements to communicate emotion, focusing on movements arising in three epochs: before vocalization (pre-production), during vocalization (production), and immediately after vocalization (post-production). Singing involves vocal production accompanied by a dynamic and meaningful use of facial expressions, which may serve as ancillary gestures that complement, disambiguate, or reinforce the acoustic signal.

2Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.

1Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Thompson 1 *, Christian Kroos 1 and Caroline Palmer 2

Vienna ensemble consecutively assign