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

Master Teachers’ Critical Practice and Student Learning Strategies: A Case Study in an Urban School District

Job embedded professional development in the K-12 education setting has long been discussed and debated. This study builds on standards of critical reflection and thinking using the National Institute for Excellence in Education’s Teacher Advancement Program’s master teacher model as a conduit between theory and practice. A study of professional development design based on student learning strategies became worthy of review. The master teacher, through field testing and critical reflection, isolates critical elements necessary to transform teaching practice around student learning strategies. The work of the master teacher is situated as a leader of change within a professional learning community. This work has potential to promote significant school improvement. The Teacher Advancement Program models a systematic process by which teachers develop and tune teaching strategies directly from student identified need. This study captures the chronicling process as it relates to and aligns with standards of critical thinking, student meta-cognition, and student deployment and use. It provides a forum for training teachers to be critically reflective practitioners moving conversation and study from theory to practice. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible at the OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu

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

Using 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

ERP correlates of motivating voices: quality of motivation and time-course matters

Here, we conducted the first study to explore how motivations expressed through speech are processed in real-time. Participants listened to sentences spoken in two types of well-studied motivational tones (autonomy-supportive and controlling), or a neutral tone of voice. To examine this, listeners were presented with sentences that either signaled motivations through prosody (tone of voice) and words simultaneously (e.g. ‘You absolutely have to do it my way’ spoken in a controlling tone of voice), or lacked motivationally biasing words (e.g. ‘Why don’t we meet again tomorrow’ spoken in a motivational tone of voice). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to motivations conveyed through words and prosody showed that listeners rapidly distinguished between motivations and neutral forms of communication as shown in enhanced P2 amplitudes in response to motivational when compared with neutral speech. This early detection mechanism is argued to help determine the importance of incoming information. Once assessed, motivational language is continuously monitored and thoroughly evaluated. When compared with neutral speech, listening to controlling (but not autonomy-supportive) speech led to enhanced late potential ERP mean amplitudes, suggesting that listeners are particularly attuned to controlling messages. The importance of controlling motivation for listeners is mirrored in effects observed for motivations expressed through prosody only. Here, an early rapid appraisal, as reflected in enhanced P2 amplitudes, is only found for sentences spoken in controlling (but not autonomy-supportive) prosody. Once identified as sounding pressuring, the message seems to be preferentially processed, as shown by enhanced late potential amplitudes in response to controlling prosody. Taken together, results suggest that motivational and neutral language are differentially processed; further, the data suggest that listening to cues signaling pressure and control cannot be ignored and lead to preferential, and more in-depth processing mechanisms

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

Social power and recognition of emotional prosody: High power is associated with lower recognition accuracy than low power

Listeners have to pay close attention to a speaker’s tone of voice (prosody) during daily conversations. This is particularly important when trying to infer the emotional state of the speaker. While a growing body of research has explored how emotions are processed from speech in general, little is known about how psycho-social factors such as social power can shape the perception of vocal emotional attributes. Thus, the present studies explored how social power affects emotional prosody recognition. In a correlational (Study 1) and an experimental study (Study 2), we show that high power is associated with lower accuracy in emotional prosody recognition than low power. These results, for the first time, suggest that individuals experiencing high or low power perceive emotional language differently

Neurophysiological markers of phrasal verb processing: evidence from L1 and L2 speakers

Bilingual Figurative Language Processing is a timely book that provides a much-needed bilingual perspective to the broad field of figurative language. This is the first book of its kind to address how bilinguals acquire, store, and process figurative language, such as idiomatic expressions (e.g., kick the bucket), metaphors (e.g., lawyers are sharks), and irony, and how these tropes might interact in real time across the bilingual's two languages. This volume offers the reader and the bilingual student an overview of the major strands of research, both theoretical and empirical, currently being undertaken in this field of inquiry. At the same time, Bilingual Figurative Language Processing provides readers and undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience in the development of psycholinguistic experiments in bilingual figurative language. Each chapter includes a section on suggested student research projects. Selected chapters provide detailed procedures on how to design and develop psycholinguistic experiments

dráma 4 felvonásban - írta Eugéne Brieux - fordította Zigány Árpád - rendező Kemény Lajos

Városi Szinház. Debreczen, 1913 február 15 -én szombaton: K. Hegyesy Mari és Beregi Oszkár a budapesti nemzeti szinház művészeinek együttes felléptével.Debreceni Egyetem Egyetemi és Nemzeti Könyvtá

The Neurocognition of Prosody

Prosody is one of the most undervalued components of language, despite its fulfillment of manifold purposes. It can, for instance, help assign the correct meaning to compounds such as “white house” (linguistic function), or help a listener understand how a speaker feels (emotional function). However, brain-based models that take into account the role prosody plays in dynamic speech comprehension are still rare. This is probably due to the fact that it has proven difficult to fully denote the neurocognitive architecture underlying prosody. This review discusses clinical and neuroscientific evidence regarding both linguistic and emotional prosody. It will become obvious that prosody processing is a multistage operation and that its temporally and functionally distinct processing steps are anchored in a functionally differentiated brain network