Perceived Anger in Clear and Conversational Speech: Contributions of Age and Hearing Loss.

Shae D Morgan,Ashton D Crain,Sarah Hargus Ferguson,Skyler G Jennings

doi:10.3390/brainsci12020210

Abstract

A previous investigation demonstrated differences between younger adult normal-hearing listeners and older adult hearing-impaired listeners in the perceived emotion of clear and conversational speech. Specifically, clear speech sounded angry more often than conversational speech for both groups, but the effect was smaller for the older listeners. These listener groups differed by two confounding factors, age (younger vs. older adults) and hearing status (normal vs. impaired). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the contributions of aging and hearing loss to the reduced perception of anger in older adults with hearing loss. We investigated perceived anger in clear and conversational speech in younger adults with and without a simulated age-related hearing loss, and in older adults with normal hearing. Younger adults with simulated hearing loss performed similarly to normal-hearing peers, while normal-hearing older adults performed similarly to hearing-impaired peers, suggesting that aging was the primary contributor to the decreased anger perception seen in previous work. These findings confirm reduced anger perception for older adults compared to younger adults, though the significant speaking style effect—regardless of age and hearing status—highlights the need to identify methods of producing clear speech that is emotionally neutral or positive.

Highlights

Talkers may adopt a more clear speaking style to overcome perceived barriers to communication
Experiment I showed no significant effect of simulated hearing loss on the perception of anger in clear and conversational speech in a group of young adult listeners
This finding suggests that the reduced perception of anger in clear and conversational speech in older adults with hearing loss is driven by the effects of age, rather than the effects of hearing sensitivity

Summary

Introduction

Talkers may adopt a more clear speaking style to overcome perceived barriers to communication (e.g., when the listener has a hearing loss or is a non-native speaker of the talker’s language). Stop consonants are released more often [5,6], voice onset time of word-initial voiceless stop consonants increases [5], and short-term vowel spectra change in a manner that expands the acoustic vowel space [7,8]. While adopting these segmental and suprasegmental modifications makes speech easier to understand for many different listener groups, there has been some speculation recently about other, unintended consequences of clear speech, such as the increased perception of anger [9]. The pattern of acoustic modifications that talkers use to make themselves easier to understand may promote the perception of anger and other negative emotions

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Discussion

Conclusion