Categorizing Emotion in Spoken Language

Janine K. Fitzpatrick and John Logan

METHOD

RESULTS

We understand emotion through spoken language via two types of cues:• Semantic content (what is being said)• Prosodic content (changes in pitch, amplitude and duration)  People with psychopathy display lower accuracy when identifying emotions from spoken words, particularly fear (Blair et al., 2002).  Bagley, Abramowitz and Kosson (2009):•Psychopaths classified affective stimuli less accurately than non-psychopaths •No fear category in experimental design

 Pilot study indicated that even non-psychopathic listeners have trouble identifying fear from prosodic content alone The current study aimed to replicate the findings of Bagley et al. (2009) among a non-psychopathic population with a category for fear Results will be used to provide a normative sample for use in further research with psychopathic population 

DISCUSSION

Participants•36 monolingual English-speaking Carleton undergraduate students•All are non-psychopathic (as measured by the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale SRP-II; Williams, Paulhus, & Hare, 2007) Ratings Task•Total 384 sentences (18-20 in each emotion category spoken in English and French; 4 speakers)Participants rate affect by choosing from 5 emotion categories7-point intensity scale (1=low intensity; 4=moderate intensity; 7=high intensity) Design•Semantic condition: English sentences produced with neutral prosody (no prosodic cues)•Prosodic condition: French sentences produced with appropriate prosodic cues (no semantic cues for monolingual English listeners)•2 male and 2 female speakers

The ratings task depends on the perception and categorization of emotional cues

Participants used more semantic cues when identifying happiness, sadness and fear in speech; more prosodic cues for anger

Next step: analyze confusion data for multidimensional scale solution Even subclinical levels of psychopathy may be implicated in deficits in processing emotional language; Dysfunctional fear hypothesis: less adverse arousal to punishment (Blair et al., 2005)?

Future iterations will examine categorization accuracy within psychopathic population

REFERENCESBagley, A. D., Abramowitz, C.S., & Kosson, D.S. (2009). Vocal affect recognition and psychopathy: Converging findings across traditional and cluster analytic approaches to assessing the construct. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118 (2), 388-398.  Blair, J., Mitchell D.R., & Blair, K. (2005). The psychopath: Emotion and the brain. London: Blackwell Publishing Professional. Blair, R.J.R., Mitchell, D.G.V., Richell, R.A., Kelly, S., & Leonard, A. (2002). Turning a deaf ear to fear: Impaired recognition of vocal affect in psychopathic individuals. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111 (4), 682-686. Scherer, K. R., Johnstone, T., & Klasmeyer, G. (2003). Vocal expression of emotion. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, and H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of the Affective Sciences. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, K., & Paulhus D. (2002). Factor structure of the Self-Report Psychopathy scale (SRP-II) in non-forensic samples. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 765-778.

INTRODUCTION

Figure 1. Mean accuracy for sentence categorization by emotion in semantic and prosodic conditions. Error bars represent ±1 standard error of the mean.

Table 1Mean categorization accuracy of high and low SRP-III participants by emotion and condition (SD)

Condition Low (n = 18) High (n = 18)

Semantic

Happiness ** .85 (.23) .58 (.31)

Sadness .82 (.14) .75 (.17)

Anger ** .79 (.17) .56 (.24)

Fear ** .84 (.16) .64 (.22)

Neutral .83 (.22) .74 (.20)

Prosodic

Happiness .54 (.16) .50 (.17)

Sadness .63 (.20) .55 (.22)

Anger .77 (.14) .73 (.17)

Fear .28 (.17) .18 (.16)

Neutral .63 (.22) .63 (.20)

Note. ** p < .01 for low and high SRP-III group comparisons.

Figure 2. Relationship between SRP-III score and response accuracy for sentences expressing fear in the semantic condition, r = -.36.