Examining the effects of variation in emotional tone of voice on spoken word recognition

Abstract

Emotional tone of voice (ETV) is essential for optimal verbal communication. Research has found that the impact of variation in nonlinguistic features of speech on spoken word recognition differs according to a time course. In the current study, we investigated whether intratalker variation in ETV follows the same time course in two long-term repetition priming experiments. We found that intratalker variability in ETVs affected reaction times to spoken words only when processing was relatively slow and difficult, not when processing was relatively fast and easy. These results provide evidence for the use of both abstract and episodic lexical representations for processing within-talker variability in ETV, depending on the time course of spoken word recognition.

Keywords:

• Spoken word recognition
• Emotional tone of voice
• Indexical specificity effects
• Variability
• Time course

Notes

¹ Cohen's d statistics were calculated for within-participant data using an online effect size calculator (Cognitive Flexibility Laboratory, 2008). The typical effect size interpretations for Cohen's d are 0.2 = small; 0.5 = medium; 0.8 = large.

² Traditional item analyses with items as random factors are inappropriate for the current experiments, as we carefully selected stimuli on the basis of variables known to affect the dependent variables under investigation. Furthermore, the design used counterbalanced lists such that each item appeared in every condition (Raaijmakers, Schrijnemakers, & Gremmen, 1999). Furthermore, long-term repetition priming paradigms limit the number of items in a within-participants manipulation because increasing items tends to decrease the likelihood of obtaining long-term repetition priming effects, in turn decreasing power as a consequence of having few items (M^cLennan & Luce, 2005). Therefore, two dummy variables representing allocation of participants to experimental lists were included in the ANOVAs. Because these dummy variables were included solely to reduce the estimate of random variation (see Gaskell & Dumay, 2003; Pollatsek & Well, 1995), their effects are not reported.