Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Carolyn Hildebrandt

Abstract

Music and speech are closely related to one another. Both have specific elements, such as average fundamental frequency, pitch variation, and speed, to accurately communicate emotion. Some emotions have characteristic speech patterns; in the case of sadness, a low mean fundamental frequency, slow speed of speech, and minimal pitch variation are common. Both music and speech also utilize physical metaphors (up/down, high/low, etc.) to express positivity and negativity. The study was intended to determine whether male vocal register correlated with levels of depressive symptoms. Specifically, tenors were expected to have lower levels of depression than baritones and basses. Participants (16 singers from the UNI Varsity Men's Glee Club and UNI Singers) were given anonymous random email addresses and electronically completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). A one-way ANOVA was run on the depression scores and vocal registers. The results suggest that no significant correlation exists between vocal register and depression.

Year of Submission

2011

Department

Department of Psychology

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

5-2011

Object Description

1 PDF file (21 pages)

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