Neuro-cognitive studies of vocal emotion processing in speech

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This research program investigates how humans use their voice to communicate emotion and social intentions in the context of spoken language, as part of a growing effort to advance knowledge of the cognitive and affective processes that underlie human social behaviour. In the past decade, we have made significant gains in our understanding of the neuro-cognitive mechanisms involved in processing vocal expressions of basic' emotion (e.g., anger or joy). Increasingly, this work is being extended to look at how the brain responds to more socially-complex meanings encoded by the human voice in conjunction with the linguistic message (e.g.,sarcasm). Here, we plan new experiments that logically extend our long-standing work on the neuro-cognition of vocal emotion processing (THEME 1), while expanding our focus to novel studies that consider the social functions of vocal behaviour in relation to the adult human brain (THEMES 2 & 3). *** In THEME 1, we address a gap in the literature on emotions by comparing the cognitive underpinnings and time course for processing emotions embedded in speech (emotional prosody) versus non-linguistic expressions of emotion (laughs, screams). While vocal emotions expressed non-linguistically and in speech share core acoustic-perceptual features, these signals appear to engage different neural regions and have distinct on-line effects on the processing system. We will test these ideas further to clarify how the type of vocal expression (speech vs. non-linguistic) and type of emotion affect ongoing neural responses to the stimuli in reference to event-related brain potentials (ERPs).*** In THEME 2, we ask the question: how does the listener encode socially relevant vocal meanings that refer to a speaker's mental state, such as their confidence level (feeling of knowing)? And how are vocal speech cues processed to evaluate speaker believability? Our experiments will address these questions using ERPs and functional magnetic resonance imaging, for example, by investigating how utterances produced in a confident/unconfident manner are processed by listeners when the speaker has a native vs. foreign accent, or when they can access general knowledge concurrent with vocal cues.*** In THEME 3, we examine another important social dimension of the voice: how speakers use these cues to mark their interpersonal stance or orientation toward the listener. In a set of acoustic-perceptual and ERP studies, we will examine the contexts of politeness, jocularity (mock impoliteness), and vocal cues that communicate sexual innuendo.*** Our plan represents an original and feasible extension of previous work, and all necessary resources to ensure success are accessible to the research team. Our work will inform theories and new research at the interface of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology, and foster research that incorporates voice into descriptions of how humans socially interact.**