Concurrent affective and linguistic prosody with the same emotional valence elicits a late positive ERP response

Change in linguistic prosody generates a mismatch negativity response (MMN), indicating neural representation of linguistic prosody, while change in affective prosody generates a positive response (P3a), reflecting its motivational salience. However, the neural response to concurrent affective and linguistic prosody is unknown. The present paper investigates the integration of these two prosodic features in the brain by examining the neural response to separate and concurrent processing by electroencephalography (EEG). A spoken pair of Swedish words—[ˈfɑ́ːsɛn] phase and [ˈfɑ̀ːsɛn] damn—that differed in emotional semantics due to linguistic prosody was presented to 16 subjects in an angry and neutral affective prosody using a passive auditory oddball paradigm. Acoustically matched pseudowords—[ˈvɑ́ːsɛm] and [ˈvɑ̀ːsɛm]—were used as controls. Following the constructionist concept of emotions, accentuating the conceptualization of emotions based on language, it was hypothesized that concurrent affective and linguistic prosody with the same valence—angry [ˈfɑ̀ːsɛn] damn—would elicit a unique late EEG signature, reflecting the temporal integration of affective voice with emotional semantics of prosodic origin. In accordance, linguistic prosody elicited an MMN at 300–350 ms, and affective prosody evoked a P3a at 350–400 ms, irrespective of semantics. Beyond these responses, concurrent affective and linguistic prosody evoked a late positive component (LPC) at 820–870 ms in frontal areas, indicating the conceptualization of affective prosody based on linguistic prosody. This study provides evidence that the brain does not only distinguish between these two functions of prosody but also integrates them based on language and experience

Demonstration and validation of Kernel Density Estimation for spatial meta-analyses in cognitive neuroscience using simulated data

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled "Convergence of semantics and emotional expression within the IFG pars orbitalis" (Belyk et al., 2017) [1]. The research article reports a spatial meta-analysis of brain imaging experiments on the perception of semantic compared to emotional communicative signals in humans. This Data in Brief article demonstrates and validates the use of Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) as a novel statistical approach to neuroimaging data. First, we performed a side-by-side comparison of KDE with a previously published meta-analysis that applied activation likelihood estimation, which is the predominant approach to meta-analyses in cognitive neuroscience. Second, we analyzed data simulated with known spatial properties to test the sensitivity of KDE to varying degrees of spatial separation. KDE successfully detected true spatial differences in simulated data and displayed few false positives when no true differences were present. R code to simulate and analyze these data is made publicly available to facilitate the further evaluation of KDE for neuroimaging data and its dissemination to cognitive neuroscientists

Speech dysprosody but no music ‘dysprosody’ in Parkinson’s disease

AbstractParkinson’s disease is characterized not only by bradykinesia, rigidity, and tremor, but also by impairments of expressive and receptive linguistic prosody. The facilitating effect of music with a salient beat on patients’ gait suggests that it might have a similar effect on vocal behavior, however it is currently unknown whether singing is affected by the disease. In the present study, fifteen Parkinson patients were compared with fifteen healthy controls during the singing of familiar melodies and improvised melodic continuations. While patients’ speech could reliably be distinguished from that of healthy controls matched for age and gender, purely on the basis of aural perception, no significant differences in singing were observed, either in pitch, pitch range, pitch variability, and tempo, or in scale tone distribution, interval size or interval variability. The apparent dissociation of speech and singing in Parkinson’s disease suggests that music could be used to facilitate expressive linguistic prosody

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

Perception of Linguistic and Affective Prosody in Individuals with Aphasia

The current study was carried out with the aim of testing the perception of linguistic and affective prosody in individuals with aphasia. Convenient sampling was followed for the recruitment of participants. Comparative group design was used. The participants were divided into two groups. The first group comprised of 10 individuals with aphasia while the second group comprised of 10 neurologically healthy individuals. The study was carried out in native and non-native languages of the participants. Based on this premise, two tasks were configured. The first task required the participants to judge the prosody of sentences in native language and the second task required the participants to judge the sentences based on the prosody in the non-native language. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the performance of the two groups. Statistically significant difference between the two groups was found on both the tasks. The theoretical premise suggests that the linguistic prosody is affected in left brain damaged adults however, the affective prosody is spared in this population. The findings of the current study contradicted this result as perception of linguistic and affective prosody was found to be affected in persons with aphasia

Linguistic prosody and comprehension of idioms and proverbs in subjects of school age

A crucial component of language is represented by the prosodic system because it provides essential elements to speaker about how a sentence should be interpreted or intended (Fodor, 2002). Increasing interest from researchers also relates to the understanding of figurative language (Levorato, & Cacciari, 2002). In the figures of speech that the speaker wants the listener intends something more or different than what is explicitly stated (Glucksberg, 2001).. In particular, prosodic intonation is crucial in the resolution of syntactic ambiguity and structural features that constitute the complex messages, such as idioms and proverbs. A crucial component of language, therefore, is represented by the prosodic system because it provides essential elements to talking about how a sentence should be interpreted or understood . The ability to relate to metalinguistic understanding the cognitive processes that allow you to reflect on language and manipulate its characteristics. These capabilities are essential to recognize and resolve the ambiguities of a complex message, you can control and plan the way we produce and understand language (Levorato, 2007). The study demonstrates that an understanding prosodic correlates with the understanding of idioms and proverbs, which are crucial for the achievement of metalinguistic awareness, are influenced by the level of schooling and socio-cultural

Age-Related Changes to the Production of Linguistic Prosody

The production of speech prosody (the rhythm, pausing, and intonation associated with natural speech) is critical to effective communication. The current study investigated the impact of age-related changes to physiology and cognition in relation to the production of two types of linguistic prosody: lexical stress and the disambiguation of syntactically ambiguous utterances. Analyses of the acoustic correlates of stress: speech intensity (or sound-pressure level; SPL), fundamental frequency (F0), key word/phrase duration, and pause duration revealed that both young and older adults effectively use these acoustic features to signal linguistic prosody, although the relative weighting of cues differed by group. Differences in F0 were attributed to age-related physiological changes in the laryngeal subsystem, while group differences in duration measures were attributed to relative task complexity and the cognitive-linguistic load of these respective tasks. The current study provides normative acoustic data for older adults which informs interpretation of clinical findings as well as research pertaining to dysprosody as the result of disease processes

Perception and comprehension of linguistic and affective prosody in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome

International audienceThe present study investigated language outcomes in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome compared with 7 to 8 year-old healthy children and healthy adults. We examined their capacity of understanding simple sentences using linguistic and affective prosodic cues and perceiving them. A battery of prosodic tests was elaborated and used for this study. Results revealed certain delayed language development or a different pattern of performance in participants with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. With more subjects tested in the future results from our battery of prosodic tests would allow us to better understand language development in child and it would be helpful for speech-language therapies

Meta-Analysis on the Identification of Linguistic and Emotional Prosody in Cochlear Implant Users and Vocoder Simulations

Objectives: This study quantitatively assesses how cochlear implants (CIs) and vocoder simulations of CIs influence the identification of linguistic and emotional prosody in nontonal languages. By means of meta-analysis, it was explored how accurately CI users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners of vocoder simulations (henceforth: simulation listeners) identify prosody compared with NH listeners of unprocessed speech (henceforth: NH listeners), whether this effect of electric hearing differs between CI users and simulation listeners, and whether the effect of electric hearing is influenced by the type of prosody that listeners identify or by the availability of specific cues in the speech signal. Design: Records were found by searching the PubMed Central, Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, and PsycINFO databases (January 2018) using the search terms “cochlear implant prosody” and “vocoder prosody.” Records (published in English) were included that reported results of experimental studies comparing CI users’ and/or simulation listeners’ identification of linguistic and/or emotional prosody in nontonal languages to that of NH listeners (all ages included). Studies that met the inclusion criteria were subjected to a multilevel random-effects meta-analysis. Results: Sixty-four studies reported in 28 records were included in the meta-analysis. The analysis indicated that CI users and simulation listeners were less accurate in correctly identifying linguistic and emotional prosody compared with NH listeners, that the identification of emotional prosody was more strongly compromised by the electric hearing speech signal than linguistic prosody was, and that the low quality of transmission of fundamental frequency (f0) through the electric hearing speech signal was the main cause of compromised prosody identification in CI users and simulation listeners. Moreover, results indicated that the accuracy with which CI users and simulation listeners identified linguistic and emotional prosody was comparable, suggesting that vocoder simulations with carefully selected parameters can provide a good estimate of how prosody may be identified by CI users. Conclusions: The meta-analysis revealed a robust negative effect of electric hearing, where CIs and vocoder simulations had a similar negative influence on the identification of linguistic and emotional prosody, which seemed mainly due to inadequate transmission of f0 cues through the degraded electric hearing speech signal of CIs and vocoder simulations

Enhanced linguistic prosodic skills in musically trained individuals with Williams syndrome

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) present prosodic impairments. They are also interested in musical activities. In typical development, a body of research has shown that the linguistic prosodic skills of musically trained individuals are enhanced. However, it is not known whether, in WS, musical training is also associated with enhanced prosodic performance, a question this study sought to answer. We compared the performance on linguistic prosodic tasks among seven musically trained and fourteen musically untrained individuals with WS, and typically developing peers. Among those with WS, musically trained participants outperformed their musically untrained counterparts on the perception of acoustic parameters involved in prosody, the understanding of questioning and declarative intonation, and the comprehension of prefinal contrastive stress. The results suggest that musical training facilitates prosodic performance in WS. Our findings also suggest common processing mechanisms for acoustic parameters involved in both prosody and music, and that positive music-to-language transfer effects could take place in WS. We discuss the implications of these results for intervention purposesThis research was funded by grant AP2003-5098 from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Spanish Government. The manuscript was proofread thanks to funds from the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology (UNED