Is the processing of affective prosody influenced by spatial attention? An ERP study.

BACKGROUND: The present study asked whether the processing of affective prosody is modulated by spatial attention. Pseudo-words with a neutral, happy, threatening, and fearful prosody were presented at two spatial positions. Participants attended to one position in order to detect infrequent targets. Emotional prosody was task irrelevant. The electro-encephalogram (EEG) was recorded to assess processing differences as a function of spatial attention and emotional valence. RESULTS: Event-related potentials (ERPs) differed as a function of emotional prosody both when attended and when unattended. While emotional prosody effects interacted with effects of spatial attention at early processing levels ( 200 ms). CONCLUSIONS: Emotional prosody, therefore, seems to be partially processed outside the focus of spatial attention. Whereas at early sensory processing stages spatial attention modulates the degree of emotional voice processing as a function of emotional valence, emotional prosody is processed outside of the focus of spatial attention at later processing stages