Voice fundamental frequency in the circumstances of exam stress and personality dimensions

The objective of the study is to explore the relationship between vocal characteristics in stress inducing circumstances, and personality dimensions. Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ), a self rating questionnaire, was administered to one hundred medical students of both genders. Their pronunciation of the five vowels in Serbian language just prior to an exam was recorded. The main characteristics of speech signals, such as the duration of vowel pronunciation, intensity and time necessary for the signal to rise up to maximum intensity, were analyzed for all the vowels. Voice fundamental frequency (F-0) was determined for the vowels A, I and U. Canonical correlation analysis revealed the relation between acoustic characteristics of the "averaged" vowel, as well as the vowels A and I on the one side, and personality dimensions on the other. There is a positive correlation between fundamental frequency, on one side, and harm avoidance and reward dependence on the other, and a negative correlation between fundamental frequency and novelty seeking. These results may be considered in the context of exam stress influence on the speech signal characteristics dependent on the personality type postulated by Cloninger.