The Neurocognition of Prosody

Paulmann, Silke

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-407794-2.00088-2

Cited by 25 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Banse & Scherer, 1996). Still, while there is an extensive literature devoted to how emotions are conveyed or understood through prosody (see e.g., Paulmann, 2015, for cognitive/social neuroscience review), far less is known about how social viewpoints, beliefs, or attitudes are conveyed or understood (Mitchell & Ross, 2013). This is surprising given how frequently, and in how wide a range of social and communicative contexts such prosody is used.…”

Section: Social Prosodymentioning

confidence: 99%

You ‘have’ to hear this: Using tone of voice to motivate others.

Weinstein¹,

Zougkou²,

Paulmann³

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The present studies explored the role of prosody in motivating others, and applied selfdetermination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) to do so. Initial studies describe patterns of prosody that discriminate motivational speech. Autonomy support was expressed with lower intensity, slower speech rate and less voice energy in both motivationally laden and neutral (but motivationally primed) sentences. In a follow-up study, participants were able to recognize motivational prosody in semantically neutral sentences, suggesting prosody alone may carry motivational content. Findings from subsequent studies also showed that an autonomy-supportive as compared to a controlling tone facilitated positive personal (perceived choice and lower perceived pressure, well-being) and interpersonal (closeness to others and prosocial behaviors) outcomes commonly linked to this type of motivation. Results inform both the social psychology (in particular motivation) and psycholinguistic (in particular prosody) literatures and offer a first description of how motivational tone alone can shape listeners' experiences.

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Section: Social Prosodymentioning

confidence: 99%

You ‘have’ to hear this: Using tone of voice to motivate others.

Weinstein¹,

Zougkou²,

Paulmann³

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…As described above, investigators have typically focused on identifying the nature and outcomes of the words speakers select to use when communicating motivation, but new evidence points to the importance of the tone of voice used through which a motivating directive is conveyed. Informed by work on affective prosody (see e.g., Paulmann, 2016, or Mitchell & Ross, 2013, recent work on motivational prosody (Weinstein et al, 2018) has shown that the two motivational qualities of autonomy support and control differ systematically in terms of their acoustic characteristics. Specifically, autonomy-supportive phrasing uses a lower volume and less vocal energy in high frequency bands when compared to intoning controlling phrasing (Weinstein et al, 2018).…”

Section: The Sound Of Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents’ reactions to mothers.

Weinstein¹,

Vansteenkiste²,

Paulmann³

2019

Developmental Psychology

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Virtually nothing is known about the role that tone of voice may play in motivating interactions. Herein, we use an experimental approach to explore for the first time how the same directive instructions ("Do well at the play") have different effects on adolescents depending on the motivational tone of voice used to convey these instructions. A sample of 1,000 adolescents aged 14-15 years was randomly assigned to hearing semantically identical messages that were expressed by mothers of adolescents with controlling, autonomysupportive, or neutral tones of voice. Results suggest that the way speakers modulated their voice when intoning the same verbal messages affected adolescents' emotional, relational, and behavioral intention responses. Listening to mothers making motivating statements in an autonomy-supportive, relative to a neutral, tone of voice elicited more positive and less negative emotions, increased closeness and intentional behavioral engagement among 14-15year old adolescents, while the opposite set of findings emerged when adolescents listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice. These findings elucidate how mothers' spoken communications can impact adolescents, with implications for the quality of parent-child relationships, adolescents' well-being and engagement.

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“…Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that perception of linguistic intonation involves fronto‐temporal and parietal brain regions in both hemispheres. These regions have been associated with different steps in intonation processing, from basic auditory analysis of pitch via abstraction of pitch contours to subvocal rehearsal and categorical labelling of intonation, for example, as statement or question (for reviews, see Baum & Pell, ; Belyk & Brown, ; Paulmann, ; Witteman, van Ijzendoorn, van de Velde, van Heuven, & Schiller, ). One point of constant debate is the lateralisation of linguistic intonation perception.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of intonation and lexical tone in tonal and non‐tonal language speakers

Chien

Friederici

Hartwigsen

et al. 2020

Human Brain Mapping

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Intonation, the modulation of pitch in speech, is a crucial aspect of language that is processed in right‐hemispheric regions, beyond the classical left‐hemispheric language system. Whether or not this notion generalises across languages remains, however, unclear. Particularly, tonal languages are an interesting test case because of the dual linguistic function of pitch that conveys lexical meaning in form of tone, in addition to intonation. To date, only few studies have explored how intonation is processed in tonal languages, how this compares to tone and between tonal and non‐tonal language speakers. The present fMRI study addressed these questions by testing Mandarin and German speakers with Mandarin material. Both groups categorised mono‐syllabic Mandarin words in terms of intonation, tone, and voice gender. Systematic comparisons of brain activity of the two groups between the three tasks showed large cross‐linguistic commonalities in the neural processing of intonation in left fronto‐parietal, right frontal, and bilateral cingulo‐opercular regions. These areas are associated with general phonological, specific prosodic, and controlled categorical decision‐making processes, respectively. Tone processing overlapped with intonation processing in left fronto‐parietal areas, in both groups, but evoked additional activity in bilateral temporo‐parietal semantic regions and subcortical areas in Mandarin speakers only. Together, these findings confirm cross‐linguistic commonalities in the neural implementation of intonation processing but dissociations for semantic processing of tone only in tonal language speakers.

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The Neurocognition of Prosody

Cited by 25 publications

References 82 publications

You ‘have’ to hear this: Using tone of voice to motivate others.

You ‘have’ to hear this: Using tone of voice to motivate others.

Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents’ reactions to mothers.

Neural correlates of intonation and lexical tone in tonal and non‐tonal language speakers

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