There’s 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 Carver 1 1 University of California, San Diego, 2 San Diego State University References Background Participants Stimuli Methods Preliminary Results Questions Acknowledgements Methods 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! General Discussion Results N = 43 (27 female) UCSD undergraduates (mean age = 21, SD = 2.9, range = 18-31) All monolingual native English speakers 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 paradigm: 11 Sentences edited into successive clips, with duration increasing in increments of 250ms; 5s of silence in between (Figure 1) N = 16 (8 female) children, ages 5-7 (mean = 6.4, SD =.7, range = 5.3–7.7) All monolingual native English speakers, free from developmental disorders Experiment 1Experiment 2 Questions Participants 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 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) Participants randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 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 What is the developmental progression associated with the processing of emotional prosody? Could it provide insight into the patterns seen in Experiment 1? 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). 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? 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. 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 perceptual 1 and attentional 2 stages to higher cognitive functions such as decision-making 3 and categorization. 4 Studies using visual emotional stimuli have demonstrated enhanced processing of negative content. 5, 6 Lesion and neuroimaging studies have highlighted the amygdala’s 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. 1 Phelps et al (2006). Psych. Science, 17, Carretié et al (2003). Psychophys., 40, Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio (2003). Ann. NY Academy Sciences, 985, Ito et al. (1998). J Personality and Social Psych., 75, Dijksterhuis & Aarts (2003). Psych. Science, 14, Ohman, Lundqvist, & Esteves (2001). J Personality and Social Psych., 80, Adolphs et al. (1999). Neuropsychologia, 37, Vuilleumier et al. (2004). Nat. Neurosci., 7, Scott et al. (1997). Nature, 385, Morris et al.(1999). Neuropsychologia, 37, Grosjean, F. (1980). Perception & Psychophys., 28, Greater accuracy for neutral prosody, F(2, 34) = 7.87, p =.001: Faster correct identification of neutral prosody, F(2, 34) = 24.67, p =.000: The hessups ate pea chup after the sholt. 250ms 500ms 750ms Entire Sentence... Figure 1. Schematic of a spliced sentence Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 No emotion effect for accuracy (Figure 5), but faster correct identification of neutral prosody, F(2.14) = 3.28, p =.05 (Figure 6). Figure 5 Figure 6 Age correlated with overall accuracy and accuracy for recognition of neutral (but not happy or angry) prosody: