Semantic effects on the perception of emotional prosody in native and non-native Chinese speakers

ABSTRACT

While previous research has found an in-group advantage (IGA) favouring native speakers in emotional prosody perception over non-native speakers, the effects of semantics on emotional prosody perception remain unclear. This study investigated the effects of semantics on emotional prosody perception in Chinese words and sentences for native and non-native Chinese speakers. The critical manipulation was the congruence of prosodic (positive, negative) and semantic (positive, negative, and neutral) valence. Participants listened to a series of audio clips and judged whether the emotional prosody was positive or negative for each utterance. The results revealed an IGA effect: native speakers perceived emotional prosody more accurately and quickly than non-native speakers in Chinese words and sentences. Furthermore, a semantic congruence effect was observed in Chinese words, where both native and non-native speakers recognised emotional prosody more accurately in the semantic-prosody congruent condition than in the incongruent condition. However, in Chinese sentences, this congruence effect was only present for non-native speakers. Additionally, the IGA effect and semantic congruence effect on emotional prosody perception were influenced by prosody valence. These findings illuminate the role of semantics in emotional prosody perception, highlighting perceptual differences between native and non-native Chinese speakers.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional prosody
• semantics
• emotion perception
• in-group advantage
• Mandarin Chinese

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, CX, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The terms “positive” and “negative” prosody valence in this study were used to refer happy and sad emotional prosody, respectively.

2 L2 Chinese learners at this instructional level were chosen to ensure they have acquired the basic knowledge of syllable-tone combinations and sentence structures in Chinese.

3 Supplemental Figures 1 and 2 show the density plots of emotional prosody ratings for words and sentences, respectively. Both native and non-native speaker groups rated the intended positive prosody stimuli positively, and the negative stimuli negatively.

4 The 7-point Likert scale used in this study: -3 = very negative, -2 = negative, -1 = slightly negative, 0 = neither negative nor positive, 1 = slightly positive, 2 = positive, 3 = very positive.

5 Previous studies have reported significant effects of acoustic parameters on emotional prosody perception (e.g., Kao et al., 2022). Interested readers can find the additional acoustic analyses of the current study in the Supplemental Tables 9-10.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of South Carolina SPARC Graduate Research Grant [grant no. 120700-22-59283] awarded to CX.