Examining the role of variability in emotional tone of voice during online spoken word recognition

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrate that listeners are faster to recognize words recently spoken by the same talker, relative to a different talker, when processing is relatively slow. The purpose of the present study was to examine intra-talker variability in emotional tone of voice on listeners' online perception of spoken words. Based on previous work, we predicted reduced priming in the mismatch condition, when words are repeated in a different emotional tone of voice (e.g., sad and frightened), relative to the match condition, when words are repeated in the same emotional tone of voice (e.g., frightened)—when processing is relatively slow (experiment 2, hard lexical decision) and equivalent priming in the match and mismatch conditions when processing is relatively fast (experiment 1, easy lexical decision). The present study should provide a greater understanding of the role that variability in emotional tone of voice plays in listeners' online perception of spoken words.