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Even if there is a Santa Claus, researchers
say, his famous laugh of "Ho! Ho! Ho!" is pure fiction.
In their study of the acoustics of laughter,
investigators found that sounds ranged from grunts and snorts
to "song-like" utterances, but "hee-hee"
and "ho-ho" were nowhere to be heard.
Laughter seems to be comprised of a repertoire
of sounds. It's not just one sound. It's a very neutral kind
of sound. And in contrast to some of our expectations of what
laughter sounds like, we don't produce 'tee-hee' or 'ho-ho'-like
laughs. Literally, none of those.
We just don't do that.
Investigators explored the frequency,
duration, and types of sounds that are present in bouts of
laughter -- as well as the influences that drive laughter
and the effects laughter has on those who hear it.
The researchers analyzed more than 1,000
bouts of laughter among 97 men and women who viewed humorous
video clips.
It turns out that the acoustics of laughter
is an extremely complex phenomenon that differs
in many ways from standard speech.
For one, according to the researchers,
laughter is physically generated from a much
wider variety of anatomical sources than everyday
speech is, and it does not seem to carry a single pitch or
tone.
In particular, the authors note that
laughs may emerge as song-like sounds, grunts or snorts, to
name the most common forms. They found that men tend to emit
grunt-like laughs more often than women, while women tend
to produce more song-like giggles or chuckles. However, neither
sex relies exclusively on one type of laughter -- with almost
85% of individuals producing two
of the three types of dominant sounds.
And both men and women laugh at a pitch
that is considerably higher than that used in daily speech.
Men often laughed within the vocal range of a trained female
soprano singer, while women could vocalize at almost twice
that level.
And male and female patterns of laughing
sometimes include non-linear qualities with no central tone
-- sound patterns previously observed in certain dogs, monkeys
and human babies' crying. The researchers suggest that this
type of unharmonious laughing may have the unconscious purpose
of eliciting a higher level of emotional response from a listener.
In fact, the primary purpose of laughter
is to do just that -- provoke an emotional reaction among
those who hear the laugh and thereby shape the listener's
behavior and response.
Journal
of the Acoustical Society of America September 2001;110:1581-1597
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