An ERP investigation on the temporal dynamics of emotional prosody and emotional semantics in pseudo- and lexical-sentence context

Brain Lang. 2008 Apr;105(1):59-69. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2007.11.005. Epub 2008 Jan 3.

Abstract

Previous evidence supports differential event-related brain potential (ERP) responses for emotional prosodic processing and integrative emotional prosodic/semantic processing. While latter process elicits a negativity similar to the well-known N400 component, transitions in emotional prosodic processing elicit a positivity. To further substantiate this evidence, the current investigation utilized lexical-sentences and sentences without lexical content (pseudo-sentences) spoken in six basic emotions by a female and a male speaker. Results indicate that emotional prosodic expectancy violations elicit a right-lateralized positive-going ERP component independent of basic emotional prosodies and speaker voice. In addition, expectancy violations of integrative emotional prosody/semantics elicit a negativity with a whole-head distribution. The current results nicely complement previous evidence, and extend the results by showing the respective effects for a wider range of emotional prosodies independent of lexical content and speaker voice.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Attention / physiology
  • Cerebral Cortex / physiology*
  • Contingent Negative Variation
  • Dominance, Cerebral / physiology
  • Electroencephalography*
  • Emotions / physiology*
  • Evoked Potentials / physiology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Recall / physiology
  • Reaction Time / physiology
  • Semantics*
  • Sound Spectrography
  • Speech Acoustics*
  • Speech Perception / physiology*