Cross-cultural emotional prosody recognition: Evidence from Chinese and British listeners

This cross-cultural study of emotional tone of voice recognition tests the in-group advantage hypothesis (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) employing a quasi-balanced design. Individuals of Chinese and British background were asked to recognise pseudosentences produced by Chinese and British native speakers, displaying one of seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, neutral tone of voice, sad, and surprise). Findings reveal that emotional displays were recognised at rates higher than predicted by chance; however, members of each cultural group were more accurate in recognising the displays communicated by a member of their own cultural group than a member of the other cultural group. Moreover, the evaluation of error matrices indicates that both culture groups relied on similar mechanism when recognising emotional displays from the voice. Overall, the study reveals evidence for both universal and culture-specific principles in vocal emotion recognition. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis

Early and late brain signatures of emotional prosody among individuals with high versus low power

AbstractUsing ERPs, we explored the relationship between social power and emotional prosody processing. In particular, we investigated differences at early and late processing stages between individuals primed with high or low power. Comparable to previously published findings from nonprimed participants, individuals primed with low power displayed differentially modulated P2 amplitudes in response to different emotional prosodies, whereas participants primed with high power failed to do so. Similarly, participants primed with low power showed differentially modulated amplitudes in response to different emotional prosodies at a later processing stage (late ERP component), whereas participants primed with high power did not. These ERP results suggest that high versus low power leads to emotional prosody processing differences at the early stage associated with emotional salience detection and at a later stage associated with more in‐depth processing of emotional stimuli.</jats:p

You 'Have' to Hear This: Using Tone of Voice to Motivate Others.

The present studies explored the role of prosody in motivating others, and applied self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) to do so. Initial studies describe patterns of prosody that discriminate motivational speech. Autonomy support was expressed with lower intensity, slower speech rate and less voice energy in both motivationally laden and neutral (but motivationally primed) sentences. In a follow-up study, participants were able to recognize motivational prosody in semantically neutral sentences, suggesting prosody alone may carry motivational content. Findings from subsequent studies also showed that an autonomy-supportive as compared with a controlling tone facilitated positive personal (perceived choice and lower perceived pressure, well-being) and interpersonal (closeness to others and prosocial behaviors) outcomes commonly linked to this type of motivation. Results inform both the social psychology (in particular motivation) and psycho-linguistic (in particular prosody) literatures and offer a first description of how motivational tone alone can shape listeners' experiences. (PsycINFO Database Recor

Emotional Communication in Long-Term Abstained Alcoholics.

Alcoholism is associated with difficulties in perceiving emotions through nonverbal channels including prosody. The question whether these difficulties persist to long-term abstinence has, however, received little attention.In a 2-part investigation, emotional prosody production was investigated in long-term abstained alcoholics and age- and education-matched healthy controls. First, participants were asked to produce semantically neutral sentences in different emotional tones of voice. Samples were then acoustically analyzed. Next, naïve listeners were asked to recognize the emotional intention of speakers from a randomly collected subset. Voice quality indicators were also assessed by the listeners.Findings revealed emotional prosody production differences between the 2 groups. Differences were particularly apparent when looking at pitch use. Alcoholics' mean and variability of pitch differed significantly from controls' use. The use of loudness was affected to a lesser extent. Crucially, naïve raters confirmed that the intended emotion was more difficult to recognize from exemplars produced by alcoholics. Differences between the 2 groups were also found with regard to voice quality.These results suggest that emotional communication difficulties can persist long after alcoholics have quit drinking

Teachers’ Motivational Prosody: A Pre-Registered Experimental Test of Children’s Reactions to Tone of Voice Used by Teachers

Background: Teachers’ behaviours drive motivational climates that shape children’s engagement and well-being in the classroom, but few studies examine how specific teachers’ behaviours such as wording, body language, or voice contribute to these outcomes in isolation of one another. Aims: This pre-registered experiment sought to examine the often-forgotten role that teachers’ tone of voice plays in children’s education. Informed by the theoretical framework of self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), conditions manipulated controlling (pressuring, demanding), autonomy-supportive (inviting of choice), or motivationally neutral, tones of voice to explore their effects on children’s self-reported psychological needs satisfaction, well-being, intention to self-disclose to and intention to cooperate with their teacher. Sample and Method: Children aged 10-16 years (n=250) heard pre-recorded teachers’ voices holding sentence content and speakers constant across conditions, but varying tones of voice. Results: We hypothesized a-priori and found that when children heard controlling sounding voices, they anticipated lower basic psychological need satisfaction, well-being, and intention to disclose to teachers, as compared to neutral sounding voices. We also anticipated beneficial effects for autonomy-supportive versus neutral voices, but pre-registered analyses did not support these expectations. Intention to cooperate with teachers did not differ across conditions. Supporting relational motivation theory (RMT; Deci & Ryan, 2014), exploratory analyses showed that hearing autonomy-supportive sounding voices increased autonomy and relatedness need satisfactions (but not competence need satisfaction), and through doing so indirectly related to beneficial outcomes (well-being, intention to cooperate and self-disclose). Conclusion: In summary, tones of voice seem to play an important role in shaping teachers’ impact on their students

Who's in Control? Proficiency and L1 Influence on L2 Processing

Abstract We report three reaction time (RT)/event-related brain potential (ERP) semantic priming lexical decision experiments that explore the following in relation to L1 activation during L2 processing: (1) the role of L2 proficiency, (2) the role of sentence context, and (3) the locus of L1 activations (ortho-graphic vs. semantic). All experiments used German (L1) homonyms translated into English (L2) to form prime-target pairs (pine-jaw for Kiefer) to test whether the L1 caused interference in an all-L2 experiment. Both RTs and ERPs were measured on targets. Experiment 1 revealed reversed priming in the N200 component and RTs for low-proficiency learners, but only RT interference for high-proficiency participants. Experiment 2 showed that once the words were processed in sentence context, the low-proficiency participants still showed reversed N200 and RT priming, whereas the high-proficiency group showed no effects. Experiment 3 tested native English speakers with the words in sentence context and showed a null result comparable to the high-proficiency group. Based on these results, we argue that cognitive control relating to translational activation is modulated by (1) L2 proficiency, as the early interference in the N200 was observed only for low-proficiency learners, and (2) sentence context, as it helps high-proficiency learners control L1 activation. As reversed priming was observed in the N200 and not the N400 component, we argue that (3) the locus of the L1 activations was orthographic. Implications in terms of bilingual word recognition and the functional role of the N200 ERP component are discussed.</jats:p

Now Listen to This! Evidence from a Cross-Spliced Experimental Design Contrasting Pressuring and Supportive Communications

Motivating communications are a frequent experience within daily life. Recently, it has been found that two types of motivations are spoken with distinct tones of voices: control (pressure) is spoken with a low pitched, loud tone of voice, fast speech rate, and harsh sounding voice quality; autonomy (support) is spoken with a higher pitched, quieter tone of voice and a slower speech rate. These two motivational tones of voice also differentially impact listeners' well-being. Yet, little is known about the brain mechanisms linked to motivational communications. Here, participants were asked to listen to semantically identical sentences spoken in controlling, neutral, or autonomy-supportive prosody. We also presented cross-spliced versions of these sentences for maximum control over information presentation across time. Findings showed listeners quickly detected whether a speaker was providing support, being pressuring, or not using motivating tones at all. Also, listeners who are pressured do not seem to respond anew when a supportive motivational context arises, but those who had been supported are affected by a newly pressuring environment. Findings are discussed in light of motivational and prosody literatures, and in terms of significance for the role of motivational communications on behavior

Listen to Your Mother: Motivating Tones of Voice Predict Adolescents’ Reactions to Mothers

Virtually nothing is known about the role that tone of voice may play in motivating interactions. Herein, we use an experimental approach to explore for the first time how the same directive instructions (“Do well at the play”) have different effects on adolescents depending on the motivational tone of voice used to convey these instructions. A sample of 1,000 adolescents aged 14–15 years was randomly assigned to hearing semantically identical messages that were expressed by mothers of adolescents with controlling, autonomy-supportive, or neutral tones of voice. Results suggest that the way speakers modulated their voice when intoning the same verbal messages affected adolescents’ emotional, relational, and behavioral intention responses. Listening to mothers making motivating statements in an autonomy-supportive, relative to a neutral, tone of voice elicited more positive and less negative emotions, increased closeness, and intentional behavioral engagement among adolescents, while the opposite set of findings emerged when adolescents listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice. These findings elucidate how mothers’ spoken communications can impact adolescents, with implications for the quality of parent-child relationships, adolescents’ well-being, and engagement

Infants Attend Longer to Controlling versus Supportive Directive Speech

Directive communications play a critical role in infants’ and young children’s daily routines as they are regularly guided by close others. An extensive literature describes two ways of directing action, autonomy support and control. These motivational qualities are thought to be especially important to development since they shape well-being, learning, and exploration. The way in which such motivations are communicated through tone of voice may be especially important for preverbal infants, who respond to tone more than words. At present, there is little understanding of what role these motivational qualities expressed through tone of voice play in directive speech. To fill this gap in our understanding, we conducted an experiment with 39 infants ranging in age from 9-12 months. Infants were presented with validated directive phrases previously recorded by current day-care staff members in autonomy-supportive and controlling tones. Results showed infants attended longer to controlling tones than to autonomy-supportive ones, evidencing their ability to discriminate between motivational qualities at this early age. Implications for early learning and well-being are discussed