Use of Affective Prosody by Young and Older Adults

Emotion is conveyed in speech by semantic content (what is said) and by prosody (how it is said). Prior research suggests that older adults benefit from linguistic prosody when comprehending language but that they have difficulty understanding affective prosody. In a series of 3 experiments, young and older adults listened to sentences in which the emotional cues conveyed by semantic content and affective prosody were either congruent or incongruent and then indicated whether the talker sounded happy or sad. When judging the emotion of the talker, young adults were more attentive to the affective prosodic cues than to the semantic cues, whereas older adults performed less consistently when these cues conflicted. Participants’ reading and repetition of the sentences were recorded so that age- and emotion-related changes in the production of emotional speech cues could be examined. Both young and older adults were able to produce affective prosody. The age-related difference in perceiving emotion was eliminated when listeners repeated the sentences before responding, consistent with previous findings regarding the beneficial role of repetition in conversation. The results of these experiments suggest that there are age-related differences in interpreting affective prosody but that repeating may be a compensatory strategy that could minimize the everyday consequences of these differences.

from Psychology and Aging

Emotion and executive functioning: The effect of normal mood states on fluency tasks

Induced positive affect (PA) can improve verbal fluency performance, and induced negative affect (NA) can increase design fluency performance (Bartolic, Basso, Schefft, Glauser, & Titanic-Schefft, 1999). Building on this, the current study investigated associations between everyday mood states and executive functions. Participants (N = 74, mean age = 51.19 years) completed verbal and design fluency tasks and a self-report affect task. PA was associated with better verbal fluency performance, although NA was not associated with design fluency. Variations in everyday PA may be associated with cognitive performance, whereas greater shifts in NA might be needed to establish associations with executive functioning.

from the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neurophysiology

Emotion modulates language production during covert picture naming

Previous studies have shown that emotional content modulates the activity of several components of the event-related potentials during word comprehension. However, little is known about the impact of affective information on the different processing stages involved in word production. In the present study we aimed to investigate the influence of positive and negative emotions in phonological encoding, a process that have been shown to take place between 300 and 450 ms in previous studies. Participants performed letter searching in a picture naming task. It was found that grapheme monitoring in positive and negative picture names was associated with slower reaction times and enhanced amplitudes of a positive component around 400 ms as compared to monitoring letters in neutral picture names. We propose that this modulation reflects a disruption in phonological encoding processes as a consequence of the capture of attention by affective content. Grapheme monitoring in positive picture names also elicited higher amplitudes than letter searching in neutral image names in a positive component around 100 ms. This amplitude enhancement might be interpreted as a manifestation of the ‘positive offset’ during conceptual preparation processes. The results of a control experiment with a passive viewing task showed that both effects cannot be simply attributed to the processing of the emotional images per se. Overall, it seems that emotion modulates word production at several processing stages.

from Neuropsychologia

Motivational priming and processing interrupt: Startle reflex modulation during shallow and deep processing of emotional words

Valence-driven modulation of the startle reflex, that is larger eyeblinks during viewing of unpleasant pictures and inhibited blinks while viewing pleasant pictures, is well documented. The current study investigated, whether this motivational priming pattern also occurs during processing of unpleasant and pleasant words, and to what extent it is influenced by shallow versus deep encoding of verbal stimuli. Emotional and neutral adjectives were presented for 5 seconds, and the acoustically elicited startle eyeblink response was measured while subjects memorized the words by means of shallow or deep processing strategies. Results showed blink potentiation to unpleasant and blink inhibition to pleasant adjectives in subjects using shallow encoding strategies. In subjects using deep encoding strategies, blinks were larger for pleasant than unpleasant or neutral adjectives. In line with this, free recall of pleasant words was also better in subjects who engaged in deep processing. The results suggest that motivational priming holds as long as processing is perceptual. However, during deep processing the startle reflex appears to represent a measure of “processing interrupt”, facilitating blinks to those stimuli that are more deeply encoded.

from the International Journal of Psychophysiology

Auditory emotional cues enhance visual perception

Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair performance to subsequently presented neutral stimuli. Here we show a cross-modal perceptual enhancement caused by emotional cues. Auditory cue words were followed by a visually presented neutral target word. Two-alternative forced-choice identification of the visual target was improved by emotional cues as compared to neutral cues. When the cue was presented visually we replicated the emotion-induced impairment found in other studies. Our results suggest emotional stimuli have a twofold effect on perception. They impair perception by reflexively attracting attention at the expense of competing stimuli. However, emotional stimuli also induce a nonspecific perceptual enhancement that carries over onto other stimuli when competition is reduced, for example, by presenting stimuli in different modalities.

from Cognition

“I’ll remember this!” Effects of emotionality on memory predictions versus memory performance

Emotionality is a key component of subjective experience that influences memory. We tested how the emotionality of words affects memory monitoring, specifically, judgments of learning, in both cued recall and free recall paradigms. In both tasks, people predicted that positive and negative emotional words would be recalled better than neutral words. That prediction was valid for free recall of positive, negative, and neutral words, but invalid for cued recall of negative word pairs compared to neutral and positive pairs; only positive emotional pairs showed enhanced recall relative to neutral pairs. Consequently, people exhibited extreme overconfidence for cued recall of negative word pairs on the first study-test trial. We demonstrate that emotionality does not globally enhance memory, but rather has specific effects depending on the valence and task. Results are discussed in terms of this complex relationship between emotionality and memory performance and the subsequent variations in diagnosticity of emotionality as a cue for memory monitoring.

from the Journal of Memory and Language

We Can Work It Out: Age Differences in Relational Pronouns, Physiology, and Behavior in Marital Conflict

This study examined the relationship that personal pronouns spoken during a marital conversation have with the emotional qualities of those interactions and with marital satisfaction. Middle-aged and older couples (N = 154) engaged in a 15-min conflict conversation during which physiology and emotional behavior were continuously monitored. Verbatim transcripts of the conversations were coded into 2 lexical categories: (a) we-ness (we-words), pronouns that focus on the couple; (b) separateness (me/you-words), pronouns that focus on the individual spouses. Analyses revealed that greater we-ness was associated with a number of desirable qualities of the interaction (lower cardiovascular arousal, more positive and less negative emotional behavior), whereas greater separateness was associated with a less desirable profile (more negative emotional behavior, lower marital satisfaction). In terms of age differences, older couples used more we-ness words than did middle-aged couples. Further, the associations between separateness and marital satisfaction were strongest for older wives. These findings indicate that the emotional aspects of marital quality are expressed in the natural language of couples engaged in conversation.

from Psychology and Aging

We Can Work It Out: Age Differences in Relational Pronouns, Physiology, and Behavior in Marital Conflict

This study examined the relationship that personal pronouns spoken during a marital conversation have with the emotional qualities of those interactions and with marital satisfaction. Middle-aged and older couples (N = 154) engaged in a 15-min conflict conversation during which physiology and emotional behavior were continuously monitored. Verbatim transcripts of the conversations were coded into 2 lexical categories: (a) we-ness (we-words), pronouns that focus on the couple; (b) separateness (me/you-words), pronouns that focus on the individual spouses. Analyses revealed that greater we-ness was associated with a number of desirable qualities of the interaction (lower cardiovascular arousal, more positive and less negative emotional behavior), whereas greater separateness was associated with a less desirable profile (more negative emotional behavior, lower marital satisfaction). In terms of age differences, older couples used more we-ness words than did middle-aged couples. Further, the associations between separateness and marital satisfaction were strongest for older wives. These findings indicate that the emotional aspects of marital quality are expressed in the natural language of couples engaged in conversation.

from Psychology and Aging

We Can Work It Out: Age Differences in Relational Pronouns, Physiology, and Behavior in Marital Conflict

This study examined the relationship that personal pronouns spoken during a marital conversation have with the emotional qualities of those interactions and with marital satisfaction. Middle-aged and older couples (N = 154) engaged in a 15-min conflict conversation during which physiology and emotional behavior were continuously monitored. Verbatim transcripts of the conversations were coded into 2 lexical categories: (a) we-ness (we-words), pronouns that focus on the couple; (b) separateness (me/you-words), pronouns that focus on the individual spouses. Analyses revealed that greater we-ness was associated with a number of desirable qualities of the interaction (lower cardiovascular arousal, more positive and less negative emotional behavior), whereas greater separateness was associated with a less desirable profile (more negative emotional behavior, lower marital satisfaction). In terms of age differences, older couples used more we-ness words than did middle-aged couples. Further, the associations between separateness and marital satisfaction were strongest for older wives. These findings indicate that the emotional aspects of marital quality are expressed in the natural language of couples engaged in conversation.

from Psychology and Aging

Negative affect induced by derogatory verbal feedback modulates the neural signature of error detection

The present study examines the influence of induced affective state on performance monitoring. The electroencephalogram was recorded while human participants engaged in a speeded choice-reaction time task commonly used to examine performance monitoring processes. Prior to the experiment, participants were randomly allocated to receive either encouraging or derogatory feedback during task execution. Feedback was based on each participant’s reaction times. Affective state was assessed prior and after the experiment with a state questionnaire. Although participants of both feedback groups loaded high on items describing tiredness in the state questionnaire, only those with derogatory feedback loaded higher on negative state items and lower on positive state items after completion of the experiment. The error-related negativity (ERN) as an index of performance monitoring was increased after derogatory feedback; this difference was not seen at the beginning of the experiment. Negative state correlated significantly with ERN amplitude. The error positivity, a later component following errors, did not differ between feedback groups. This study provides further evidence that changes in affective state influence how we monitor ongoing behavior.

from Medical News Today.com

Negative affect induced by derogatory verbal feedback modulates the neural signature of error detection

The present study examines the influence of induced affective state on performance monitoring. The electroencephalogram was recorded while human participants engaged in a speeded choice-reaction time task commonly used to examine performance monitoring processes. Prior to the experiment, participants were randomly allocated to receive either encouraging or derogatory feedback during task execution. Feedback was based on each participant’s reaction times. Affective state was assessed prior and after the experiment with a state questionnaire. Although participants of both feedback groups loaded high on items describing tiredness in the state questionnaire, only those with derogatory feedback loaded higher on negative state items and lower on positive state items after completion of the experiment. The error-related negativity (ERN) as an index of performance monitoring was increased after derogatory feedback; this difference was not seen at the beginning of the experiment. Negative state correlated significantly with ERN amplitude. The error positivity, a later component following errors, did not differ between feedback groups. This study provides further evidence that changes in affective state influence how we monitor ongoing behavior.

from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Emotional Context Enhances Auditory Novelty Processing in Superior Temporal Gyrus

To solve this issue, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to first identify brain activations induced by novel sounds (NOV) when participants made a color decision on visual stimuli containing both negative (NEG) and neutral (NEU) facial expressions. We then measured modulation of these auditory responses by the emotional load of the task. Contrary to what was assumed, activation induced by NOV in superior temporal gyrus (STG) was enhanced when subjects responded to faces with a NEG emotional expression compared with NEU ones. Accordingly, NOV yielded stronger behavioral disruption on subjects’ performance in the NEG context. These results demonstrate that the emotional context modulates the excitability of auditory and possibly multimodal novelty cerebral regions, enhancing acoustic novelty processing in a potentially harming environment.

from Cerebral Cortex

Laughter Differs in Children with Autism: An Acoustic Analysis of Laughs Produced by Children With and Without the Disorder

Abstract Few studies have examined vocal expressions of emotion in children with autism. We tested the hypothesis that during social interactions, children diagnosed with autism would exhibit less extreme laugh acoustics than their nonautistic peers. Laughter was recorded during a series of playful interactions with an examiner. Results showed that children with autism exhibited only one type of laughter, whereas comparison participants exhibited two types. No group differences were found for laugh duration, mean fundamental frequency (F0) values, change in F0, or number of laughs per bout. Findings are interpreted to suggest that children with autism express laughter primarily in response to positive internal states, rather than using laughter to negotiate social interactions.

from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Laughter Differs in Children with Autism: An Acoustic Analysis of Laughs Produced by Children With and Without the Disorder

Abstract Few studies have examined vocal expressions of emotion in children with autism. We tested the hypothesis that during social interactions, children diagnosed with autism would exhibit less extreme laugh acoustics than their nonautistic peers. Laughter was recorded during a series of playful interactions with an examiner. Results showed that children with autism exhibited only one type of laughter, whereas comparison participants exhibited two types. No group differences were found for laugh duration, mean fundamental frequency (F0) values, change in F0, or number of laughs per bout. Findings are interpreted to suggest that children with autism express laughter primarily in response to positive internal states, rather than using laughter to negotiate social interactions.

from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Much mouth much tongue: Chinese metonymies and metaphors of verbal behaviour.

This paper explores metonymical and metaphorical expressions of verbal behaviour in Chinese. While metonymy features prominently in some of these expressions and metaphor in others, the entire dataset can be best viewed as spanning the metonymy-metaphor-continuum. That is, we observe a gradation of conceptual distance between the source and target which corresponds to the gradation of figurativity. Specifically, roughly half of the expressions we encounter are based on the ORGAN OF SPEECH ARTICULATION FOR SPEECH metonymy and can be considered as clustering around the metonymic pole. The other half can be seen as tending towards the metaphoric pole, as they are largely motivated by conceptual metaphors: (a) VERBAL BEHAVIOUR IS PHYSICAL ACTION, (b) SPEECH IS CONTAINER, (c) ARGUMENT IS WAR (or WORDS ARE WEAPONS) and (d) WORDS ARE FOOD. The interaction between metonymy and metaphor is an important cognitive strategy in the conceptualisation of verbal behaviour. The findings (i) evidence the gradient predictability of idiom meanings based on semantic compositionality, (ii) confirm the hypothesis of a bodily and experiential basis of cognition, (iii) suggest the existence of culture-specific models in the utilization of basic experiences, and (iv) point to the role of emotion in the metaphorisation of verbal behaviour as a socio-emotional domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

from Cognitive Linguistics