Acoustic analysis: an objective measure of affective flattening
N. C. Andreasen, M. Alpert and M. J. Martz
Acoustic analysis of voice patterns is an objective means of evaluating
flatness of affect. Thirty-one patients defined as having flat affect by a
reliable rating scale were compared with 30 patients who were not flat. The
hypothesis that flat patients display monotonic speech was confirmed, for
these patients showed less variance in both the amplitude and frequency of
their speech than the nonflat patients.
