“Your Tone Says It All”: The processing and interpretation of affective language

Pragmatic interpretation of intent is essential for successful communication. The current studies evaluate the impact of affective prosody on the processing and interpretation of affectively spoken language. A production study provided further evidence of talker variability in the production of the emotionally-laden categories of Innuendo, Irritation, Compassion and Neutral, indicating a great deal of within and between talker variability, as well as talker systematicity within affect categories. Despite this talker variability, in a listening task, participants were asked to categorize the intent of the talkers statements (from the production study) to determine the relative accuracy of responding, while also tracking the perception of intent as it unfolded over time (i.e., via computer Wii-mote x, y coordinates). The results from the online measurement of the perception of intent indicated that even though our listeners were accurate in categorizing intent (∼70% mean accuracy), the “dynamic signature” of their responses was laden with a great deal hesitation and indecision for some, but not all talkers. This suggests that during the perception of intent, the cognitive system is flexible enough to handle talker variability, but during perception, uncertainty will change the manner in which the intent is processed.