Intrapersonal and interpersonal vocal affect dynamics during psychotherapy.

Objective: The present study implements an automatic method of assessing arousal in vocal data as well as dynamic system models to explore intrapersonal and interpersonal affect dynamics within psychotherapy and to determine whether these dynamics are associated with treatment outcomes.

Method: The data of 21,133 mean vocal arousal observations were extracted from 279 therapy sessions in a sample of 30 clients treated by 24 therapists. Before and after each session, clients self-reported their well-being level, using the Outcome Rating Scale.