Abstract

Psychotherapy is a conversation, whereby, at its foundation, many interventions are derived from the therapist talking. Research suggests that the voice can convey a variety of emotional and social information, and individuals may change their voice based on the context and content of the conversation (e.g. talking to a baby or delivering difficult news to patients with cancer). As such, therapists may adjust aspects of their voice throughout a therapy session depending on if they are beginning a therapy session and checking in with a client, conducting more therapeutic ‘work’ or ending the session. In this study, we modelled three vocal features—pitch, energy and rate—with linear and quadratic multilevel models to understand how therapists’ vocal features change throughout a therapy session. We hypothesised that all three vocal features would be best fit with a quadratic function—starting high and more congruent …

Date

2023

Authors

Christina S Soma, Dillon Knox, Timothy Greer, Keith Gunnerson, Alexander Young, Shrikanth Narayanan

Journal

Counselling and psychotherapy research

Volume

23

Issue

1

Pages

258-269