Neurocognitive Dynamics of Prosodic Salience over Semantics during Explicit and Implicit Processing of Basic Emotions in Spoken Words

Yi Lin; Xinran Fan; Yueqi Chen; Hao Zhang; Fei Chen; Hui Zhang; Hongwei Ding; Yang Zhang

doi:10.3390/brainsci12121706

Brain Sciences (Dec 2022)

Neurocognitive Dynamics of Prosodic Salience over Semantics during Explicit and Implicit Processing of Basic Emotions in Spoken Words

Yi Lin,
Xinran Fan,
Yueqi Chen,
Hao Zhang,
Fei Chen,
Hui Zhang,
Hongwei Ding,
Yang Zhang

Affiliations

Yi Lin: Speech-Language-Hearing Center, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Xinran Fan: Speech-Language-Hearing Center, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Yueqi Chen: Speech-Language-Hearing Center, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Hao Zhang: School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
Fei Chen: School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China
Hui Zhang: School of International Education, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
Hongwei Ding: Speech-Language-Hearing Center, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Yang Zhang: Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Science & Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12121706
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 12, no. 12
p. 1706

Abstract

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How language mediates emotional perception and experience is poorly understood. The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the explicit and implicit processing of emotional speech to differentiate the relative influences of communication channel, emotion category and task type in the prosodic salience effect. Thirty participants (15 women) were presented with spoken words denoting happiness, sadness and neutrality in either the prosodic or semantic channel. They were asked to judge the emotional content (explicit task) and speakers’ gender (implicit task) of the stimuli. Results indicated that emotional prosody (relative to semantics) triggered larger N100, P200 and N400 amplitudes with greater delta, theta and alpha inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC) and event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) values in the corresponding early time windows, and continued to produce larger LPC amplitudes and faster responses during late stages of higher-order cognitive processing. The relative salience of prosodic and semantics was modulated by emotion and task, though such modulatory effects varied across different processing stages. The prosodic salience effect was reduced for sadness processing and in the implicit task during early auditory processing and decision-making but reduced for happiness processing in the explicit task during conscious emotion processing. Additionally, across-trial synchronization of delta, theta and alpha bands predicted the ERP components with higher ITPC and ERSP values significantly associated with stronger N100, P200, N400 and LPC enhancement. These findings reveal the neurocognitive dynamics of emotional speech processing with prosodic salience tied to stage-dependent emotion- and task-specific effects, which can reveal insights into understanding language and emotion processing from cross-linguistic/cultural and clinical perspectives.

Published in Brain Sciences

ISSN: 2076-3425 (Online)
Publisher: MDPI AG
Country of publisher: Switzerland
LCC subjects: Medicine: Internal medicine: Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/brainsci/

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