Categorical vs dimensional perception of Italian emotional speech

Culture and measurement strategies are influential factors when evaluating the perception of emotion in speech. However, multilingual databases suitable for such a study are missing, and there is no agreement on the most suitable emotional model. To address this gap, we present EmoFilm, a new multilingual emotional speech corpus, consisting of 1115 English, Spanish, and Italian emotional utterances extracted from 43 films and 207 speakers. We have performed a within-culture categorical vs dimensional perceptual evaluation, employing 225 native Italian listeners, who evaluated the Italian section of the database with the emotional states of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, and contempt. The aim of this study is to assess whether the emotional model (categorical or dimensional), taken as reference for measurement, influences a listener's perception of emotional speech, and-to what extent-both models are complementary or not. We show that the measurement strategy chosen does influence a listener's response, especially for some emotions, e. g., contempt. The confusion patterns typical of a categorical evaluation are not always mirrored by the dimensional assessment.