Neuro-cognitive studies of vocal emotion processing in speech

这项研究计划调查人类如何在口语环境中使用他们的声音来传达情感和社会意图，这是不断增长的努力的一部分，目的是促进人们对构成人类社会行为基础的认知和情感过程的了解。在过去的十年里，我们在理解处理基本情绪(如愤怒或喜悦)声音表达的神经认知机制方面取得了重大进展。这项工作越来越多地被扩展到观察大脑如何对人类声音结合语言信息(例如讽刺)编码的更复杂的社会意义做出反应。在这里，我们计划进行新的实验，从逻辑上扩展我们在声音情感处理的神经认知方面的长期工作(主题1)，同时将我们的重点扩展到考虑声音行为与成人人脑相关的社会功能的新颖研究(主题2和3)。*在主题1中，我们通过比较言语(情感韵律)和非语言表达情感(大笑、尖叫)中嵌入的情感的认知基础和时间进程，来解决关于情感的文献中的一个空白。虽然在非语言和语音中表达的声音情感具有核心的声学-知觉特征，但这些信号似乎涉及不同的神经区域，并对处理系统产生明显的在线影响。我们将进一步测试这些想法，以阐明声音表达的类型(言语与非语言)和情绪类型如何参照事件相关脑电位(ERPs)影响对刺激的持续神经反应。*在主题2中，我们问这样一个问题：听者如何编码与社会相关的声音意义，这些意义指的是说话人的心理状态，如他们的置信度(知晓感觉)？如何处理语音提示来评估说话人的可信度？我们的实验将使用事件相关电位和功能磁共振成像来解决这些问题，例如，通过调查当说话者有母语口音和外国口音时，听者如何处理以自信/不自信的方式产生的话语，或者当他们可以同时获得一般知识和声音提示时。*在主题3中，我们考察了声音的另一个重要的社交维度：说话者如何使用这些暗示来标记他们对听者的人际立场或取向。在一组听觉-知觉和事件相关电位研究中，我们将考察礼貌、开玩笑(模拟不礼貌)和传播性暗示的声音暗示的背景。*我们的计划代表了先前工作的原创和可行的扩展，研究团队可以获得确保成功的所有必要资源。我们的工作将在认知神经科学和社会心理学的界面上为理论和新的研究提供信息，并促进将声音纳入对人类如何社会互动的描述的研究。

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.**