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Abstract:
In the present study, the role of emotional prosody in word
recognition was examined using a cross-modal priming paradigm.
Subjects listened to sentences that had emotionally neutral content
but were spoken in a happy or a sad voice. Therefore, prosody
determined the meaning of a sentence which was either happy or sad
(e.g. Yesterday she had her final exam.). Following each sentence
(ISI 750ms), an emotionally related/unrelated word (e.g.
success/failure) or a non-word was presented visually. The subjects
had to perform a lexical decision task on the target by pressing
one of two buttons. Response latencies and ERPs (64 electrodes)
were recorded. Subjects responded faster to positive as compared to
negative words. Furthermore, words following a positive prime were
responded to faster than words following a negative prime
independent of word valence. These effects might reflect a tendency
to approach positive (rewarding) stimuli. ERPs showed a prime by
target interaction indicating differences in the processing of
prosodically related and unrelated words. Unrelated words showed a
greater positivity beginning around 500ms after target onset. This
relatively late effect suggests that emotional prosody may not play
a role in lexical access but is matched for correspondence with
semantic information in a later process.
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