There

1
Theres more to emotion than meets the eye
Processing of emotional prosody in the auditory
domain Lauren Cornew,1 Tracy Love,1,2 Georgina
Batten,1 and Leslie Carver1 1University of
California, San Diego, 2San Diego State University
General Discussion
Experiment 1
Experiment 2
Background
Methods
Questions

• Contrary to predictions, adults seemed to
  demonstrate a processing advantage for neutral
  prosody, which was identified more accurately and
  more rapidly than happy or angry prosody.
• Early school-aged children seem to show a
  pattern similar to that of adults for speed of
  processing, but not accuracy.
• Relationship between age and accuracy suggests
  developmental progression in recognition of
  emotional prosody.
• It is unclear whether the neutral bias
  reflects perception, attention,
  decision/response, or a language processing or
  acoustic parameter.
• We are currently using ERPs to further examine
  the time course of processing and conducting
  acoustic analyses to pinpoint acoustic parameters
  which might contribute to the observed effects.

• Participants randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups

• What is the developmental progression associated
  with the processing of emotional prosody? Could
  it provide insight into the patterns seen in
  Experiment 1?

• Perceiving emotional expressions is essential
  for social interactions and enables people to
  recognize (and hopefully avoid) danger.
• Emotion interacts with cognition at many levels
  of processing, from basic perceptual1 and
  attentional2 stages to higher cognitive functions
  such as decision-making3 and categorization.4
• Studies using visual emotional stimuli have
  demonstrated enhanced processing of negative
  content.5, 6
• Lesion and neuroimaging studies have highlighted
  the amygdalas role in visual emotion
  recognition,7, 8 and results from studies of
  auditory emotion processing suggest that there
  may be significant overlap in the brain areas
  recruited across modalities.9, 10 However, a
  potential processing advantage for auditory
  emotional stimuli remains under-explored.

Participants

• Every clip judged to be happy, angry, or neutral
• Variables of interest
• Percent correct
• Isolation point (length of the clip at which
  participants chose the correct emotion and did
  not subsequently change their decision)

• N 16 (8 female) children, ages 5-7 (mean
  6.4, SD .7, range 5.37.7)
• All monolingual native English speakers, free
  from developmental disorders

Stimuli

• Same as in Experiment 1, but a subset of the
  original 48 sentences (the 24 with highest
  accuracy in Exp. 1) chosen to maximize correct
  emotion identification in children
• As in Experiment 1, sentences edited into
  successive clips, with duration increasing in
  increments of 250ms

Results

• Greater accuracy for neutral prosody, F(2, 34)
  7.87, p .001

Methods

• Participants randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups
• Task presented as a game deciphering aliens
  feelings based on their tone of voice
• Every clip judged to be happy, angry, or neutral
  
• Children pressed a happy, neutral, or angry face
  on a touch screen (Figure 4).

Questions

• Is there a processing advantage or bias for
  negative prosody?
• Alternatively, is there an advantage for
  emotional (whether positive or negative) compared
  to non-emotional prosody?

References

• Faster correct identification of neutral
  prosody, F(2, 34) 24.67, p .000

1 Phelps et al (2006). Psych. Science, 17,
292-299. 2 Carretié et al (2003). Psychophys.,
40, 381-288. 3 Bechara, Damasio, Damasio
(2003). Ann. NY Academy Sciences, 985, 356-369. 4
Ito et al. (1998). J Personality and Social
Psych., 75, 887-900. 5 Dijksterhuis Aarts
(2003). Psych. Science, 14, 14-18. 6 Ohman,
Lundqvist, Esteves (2001). J Personality and
Social Psych., 80, 381-396. 7 Adolphs et al.
(1999). Neuropsychologia, 37, 1111-1117. 8
Vuilleumier et al. (2004). Nat. Neurosci., 7,
1271-1278. 9 Scott et al. (1997). Nature, 385,
254-257. 10 Morris et al.(1999).
Neuropsychologia, 37, 1155- 1163. 11 Grosjean,
F. (1980). Perception Psychophys., 28, 267-283.
Preliminary Results
Participants

• Age correlated with overall accuracy and
  accuracy for recognition of neutral (but not
  happy or angry) prosody

• N 43 (27 female) UCSD undergraduates (mean age
  21, SD 2.9, range 18-31)
• All monolingual native English speakers

Stimuli

• 48 Jabberwocky sentences spoken by an actress
  with happy, angry, and neutral prosody
• Length ranged from 1.6s to 4.4s (mean 2.7)
• Gating paradigm11 Sentences edited into
  successive clips, with duration increasing in
  increments of 250ms 5s of silence in between
  (Figure 1)

• No emotion effect for accuracy (Figure 5), but
  faster correct identification of neutral prosody,
  F(2.14) 3.28, p .05 (Figure 6).

• Sentences incorrectly labeled as neutral more
  frequently than either happy or angry, F(2, 34)
  36.13, p .000
• No tendency to label sentences as neutral by
  default Incorrect selection of neutral after
  hearing the first clip occurred at chance level,
  t(40) -.036, p .97 (2-tailed)
• Pattern of errors suggests a trend toward a
  negative bias (labeling neutral as angry or happy
  as neutral), t(40) 1.65, p .06

Acknowledgements

• This research was supported in part by an NSF
  Graduate Research Fellowship to the first author
  and NIH grants (DC00494 and DC03885) to the
  second author.
• Special thanks to Sandra Ahumada,Jessica
  Belisle, Mara Bromberg, Chris Lonner, Mark
  Martin, Maxwell Moholy, Jenn Navala, and to the
  families who participated in Experiment 2!

Figure 1. Schematic of a spliced sentence