Recognition of affective prosody by speakers of English as a first or foreign language

Adults who were fluent in English, and who grew up speaking English or one of 21 other languages listened to words spoken with angry or neutral intonation. We measured the accuracy with which the listeners identified the intended emotion. English mother tongue (EMT) polyglots scored higher than other mother tongue (OMT) listeners, whereas EMT monoglots did not. Women were significantly more accurate than men across the three listener groups. There was a modest inverse correlation between accuracy and age. The learning of a second language may have helped the EMT polyglots develop additional perceptual skills in decoding speech emotion in their native language.