Where Sounds Occur Matters: Context Effects Influence Processing of Salient Vocalisations

Abstract

<jats:p>The social context in which a salient human vocalisation is heard shapes the affective information it conveys. However, few studies have investigated how visual contextual cues lead to differential processing of such vocalisations. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is implicated in processing of contextual information and evaluation of saliency of vocalisations. Using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), we investigated PFC responses of young adults (N = 18) to emotive infant and adult vocalisations while they passively viewed the scenes of two categories of environmental contexts: a domestic environment (DE) and an outdoors environment (OE). Compared to a home setting (DE) which is associated with a fixed mental representation (e.g., expect seeing a living room in a typical house), the outdoor setting (OE) is more variable and less predictable, thus might demand greater processing effort. From our previous study in Azhari et al. (2018) that employed the same experimental paradigm, the OE context was found to elicit greater physiological arousal compared to the DE context. Similarly, we hypothesised that greater PFC activation will be observed when salient vocalisations are paired with the OE compared to the DE condition. Our finding supported this hypothesis: the left rostrolateral PFC, an area of the brain that facilitates relational integration, exhibited greater activation in the OE than DE condition which suggests that greater cognitive resources are required to process outdoor situational information together with salient vocalisations. The result from this study bears relevance in deepening our understanding of how contextual information differentially modulates the processing of salient vocalisations.</jats:p>

Psychological and Physiological Signatures of Music Listening in Different Listening Environments—An Exploratory Study

“…Yet, the effect of the listening environment was seen in the general cortisol levels which were lower at home than in the laboratory. Our expectation was based on an assumption that emotionally safe and familiar environment would support the emergence of stronger emotional responses [ 22 , 23 , 26 ]. However, the low arousal emotion ratings were always higher in the laboratory than at home.…”

“…However, one might ask whether emotional reactions of listeners are comparable in a neutral unfamiliar environment and in an environment in which listening usually takes place. Recently Azhari and others showed higher metabolic brain activity in the prefrontal cortex (involved in processing of contextual information) if emotional infant and adult vocalizations were played in outdoor than in domestic contexts [ 22 ]. This finding corroborates and extends their findings indicating that physiological signals to such emotional cues are also stronger in outdoor than in domestic environments [ 23 ].…”

Emotion Regulation, Effort and Fatigue: Complex Issues Worth Investigating

“…fNIRS has been, for example, used in studies distinguishing between effort exerted in surface and deep acting or to check whether effort invested in ER is dependent on context. Lu et al, 2019;Azhari et al, 2020 Heart rate Electrocardiography (ECG)…”

“…Therefore they can be used as a valuable source of independent and unique information about effort and fatigue effects in ER, alongside changes in ER efficiency itself. These indicators include, for example, a stimulus proceeding negativity (EEG evoked potential, Moser et al, 2017 ), pupil dilation (Strauss et al, 2016 ; Scheffel et al, 2021 ), the activity of particular brain regions detected in fMRI (e.g., Dörfel et al, 2014 ; Ellard et al, 2017 ), as well as fNIRS studies (Lu et al, 2019 ; Azhari et al, 2020 ), but also subjective self-reports of effort and fatigue (Wong et al, 2017 ; Visser et al, 2018 ). Interestingly, digital biomarkers of mental fatigue, like smartphone-based gaze detection, are also being developed (Tseng et al, 2021 ).…”

Brain mechanisms of parenting in co-parenting spouses and parent-child dyads

“…Only Stimulus 4 did not fall within this frequency range as it was specifically adjusted to be 200Hz higher than Stimulus 3 to provide a vocalisation that is more distressing (Zeskind & Marshall, 1988). Aside from Stimulus 4, the rest of the stimuli have been used and validated in two previous studies by Azhari et al (2018) and Azhari et al (2020a) which used ECG and fNIRS devices, respectively, to examine non-parents' responses to salient vocalisations.…”