Decoding speech prosody in five languages
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William Forde Thompson
William Forde Thompson (b. 1957) is Director of Communication, Culture and Information Technology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga 〈b.thompson@utoronto.ca〉. His interests include music, gesture, and cognition. His recent publications include ‘Listening to Music’ (with G. Schellenberg, 2006); ‘A comparison of acoustic cues in music and speech for three dimensions of affect’ (with G. Ilie, 2006); and ‘The subjective size of melodic intervals over a two-octave range’ (with F. A. Russo, 2006).
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L-L Balkwill
Laura-Lee Balkwill (b. 1965) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen's University 〈balkwill@post.queensu.ca〉. Her research interests include the expression and recognition of emotion in music and speech across cultures, and the eect of emotive tone of voice on reasoning. Her recent major publications include ‘Expectancies generated by recent exposures to melodic sequences’ (with B. Thompson and R. Vernescu, 2000); ‘Recognition of emotion in Japanese, North Indian, and Western music by Japanese listeners’ (with B. Thompson and R. Matsunuga, 2004); and ‘Neuropsychological assessment of musical difficulties: A study of “tone deafness” among university students’ (with L. L. Cuddy, I. Peretz, and R. Holden, 2005).
Abstract
Twenty English-speaking listeners judged the emotive intent of utterances spoken by male and female speakers of English, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Tagalog. The verbal content of utterances was neutral but prosodic elements conveyed each of four emotions: joy, anger, sadness, and fear. Identification accuracy was above chance performance levels for all emotions in all languages. Across languages, sadness and anger were more accurately recognized than joy and fear. Listeners showed an in-group advantage for decoding emotional prosody, with highest recognition rates for English utterances and lowest recognition rates for Japanese and Chinese utterances. Acoustic properties of stimuli were correlated with the intended emotion expressed. Our results support the view that emotional prosody is decoded by a combination of universal and culture-specific cues.
About the authors
William Forde Thompson (b. 1957) is Director of Communication, Culture and Information Technology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga 〈b.thompson@utoronto.ca〉. His interests include music, gesture, and cognition. His recent publications include ‘Listening to Music’ (with G. Schellenberg, 2006); ‘A comparison of acoustic cues in music and speech for three dimensions of affect’ (with G. Ilie, 2006); and ‘The subjective size of melodic intervals over a two-octave range’ (with F. A. Russo, 2006).
Laura-Lee Balkwill (b. 1965) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen's University 〈balkwill@post.queensu.ca〉. Her research interests include the expression and recognition of emotion in music and speech across cultures, and the eect of emotive tone of voice on reasoning. Her recent major publications include ‘Expectancies generated by recent exposures to melodic sequences’ (with B. Thompson and R. Vernescu, 2000); ‘Recognition of emotion in Japanese, North Indian, and Western music by Japanese listeners’ (with B. Thompson and R. Matsunuga, 2004); and ‘Neuropsychological assessment of musical difficulties: A study of “tone deafness” among university students’ (with L. L. Cuddy, I. Peretz, and R. Holden, 2005).
© Walter de Gruyter
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- On ‘semiotics’ as naming the doctrine of signs
- The Homeric Hymn to Hermes: A journey across the continuum of paradox
- ‘Read my hands not my lips’: Untrained observers' ability to interpret children's gestures
- Application d'une méthode de linguistique textuelle au livre de Ruth
- Connotations in semiotic systems of visual art (through the example of works by M. A. Vrubel)
- Dyadic versus triadic sign models in functional and object-oriented computer programming paradigms
- Life and semiosis: The real nature of information and meaning
- The cybersemiotic model of communication: An evolutionary model of the threshold between semiosis and informational exchange
- The semiotics of ‘difference’ in Roentgen diagnosis
- Mythic algebra uses: Metaphor, logic, and the semiotic sign
- An interview with Peter Ladefoged
- An interview with Elizabeth Closs Traugott
- A note on life as meaning-making machinery
- The Palace of La Moneda: From the trauma of the Hawker Hunters to the therapy of the signs
- A multiculturalist approach to discourse theory
- Formal conditions for the significance-effect
- Decoding speech prosody in five languages
- From Umwelt to Mitwelt: Natural laws versus rule-governed sign-mediated interactions (rsi's)
- The contribution of G. W. Leibniz's ‘cognitio symbolica’ theory to current debates on knowledge and communication management
