Did you or I say pretty, rude or brief? An ERP study of the effects of speaker’s identity on emotional word processing

•The effects of semantic valence and voice identity on speech processing were demonstrated.•N1 was more negative for neutral self- than non-self speech.•P2 was more positive for positive self- than non-self speech.•LPP was more positive for emotional self- than non-self speech.•Results suggest that language comprehension is modulated by self-relevance.

During speech comprehension, multiple cues need to be integrated at a millisecond speed, including semantic information, as well as voice identity and affect cues. A processing advantage has been demonstrated for self-related stimuli when compared with non-self stimuli, and for emotional relative to neutral stimuli. However, very few studies investigated self-other speech discrimination and, in particular, how emotional valence and voice identity interactively modulate speech processing. In the present study we probed how the processing of words’ semantic valence is modulated by speaker’s identity (self vs. non-self voice).Sixteen healthy subjects listened to 420 prerecorded adjectives differing in voice identity (self vs. non-self) and semantic valence (neutral, positive and negative), while electroencephalographic data were recorded. Participants were instructed to decide whether the speech they heard was their own (self-speech condition), someone else’s (non-self speech), or if they were unsure.The ERP results demonstrated interactive effects of speaker’s identity and emotional valence on both early (N1, P2) and late (Late Positive Potential – LPP) processing stages: compared with non-self speech, self-speech with neutral valence elicited more negative N1 amplitude, self-speech with positive valence elicited more positive P2 amplitude, and self-speech with both positive and negative valence elicited more positive LPP. ERP differences between self and non-self speech occurred in spite of similar accuracy in the recognition of both types of stimuli.Together, these findings suggest that emotion and speaker’s identity interact during speech processing, in line with observations of partially dependent processing of speech and speaker information.