perception of the emotional content of speech by canadian and mexican children, adolescents, and...
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7/28/2019 PERCEPTION OF THE EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF SPEECH BY CANADIAN AND MEXICAN CHILDREN, ADOLESCENTS, AND ADULTS
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international Journalof Psychology 16 (1981) 119-132
North-Holland Publishing Company
119
PERCEPTION OF THE EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF SPEECH BY
CANADIAN AND MEXICAN CHILDREN, ADOLESCENTS,
AND ADULTS *
Ken W. McCLUSKEYLord Selkirk School Division, Canada
Daniel C. ALBASUniversity of Manitoba, G m d a
Revised version received September 1980
The study at hand was undertaken to assess and compare the respective abilities of Canadian
and Mexican subjects to identify emotion in speech. Canadian and Mexican female teachers,
speaking whatever words they wished in their ow n languages,attempted to simulate four em*
tional states ( i e . , happiness, sadness, love, and anger). After thc initial recording, these samples
were passed through an electronic filter which removed the semantic content w u e leaving
intact the tonal qualities of the speech. The fdtered Vocal expressions were played to Canadian
and Mexican subjects 5 , 9 , 13, 17,25 ,45 , and 65 y w s of age. From 5 through 2 5 , there was a
progressive increase with age in ability to identify the emotion expressed. Ability did level off,
however, and eventually even decreased Ouch that the 65 year-~lds erformed less accurately
than the other adult groups). Overall, the Mexican subjects were significantly more sensitive to
emotion in speech than their Canadian counterparts. As well, both Canadian and Mexican sub-
jects judged speech samples from Mexican speakers more accurately than those from Canadian
speakers.
Any spoken communication between two or more people involves bothverbal and nonverbal elements. Indeed, much of the research in the areaof communication is based upon the notion that speech is composed oftwo distinct channels: the verbal and the vocal. Supposedly, the verbal
channel is composed of sound patterns resulting in syllables, words,phrases, sentences, and other linguistic forms conveying the semantic
meaning of speech. If the words spoken in a particular message are
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K . W . McCluskey, D.C. Albas /Emotional w n t e n t of peech 121
was a progressive increase with age in ability to identify correctly the
emotional content of the voice samples.The next study with children along these lines was performed almost
four decades later by Dimitrovsky ( 1 964), who attempted to isolate the
vocal channel of speech by holding the verbal channel constant. In her
speech samples, speakers were asked to recite the same standard para-
graph while simulating the emotions of happiness, sadness, love, andanger. When these samples were played to children aged five throughtwelve, it was likewise found that the ability to judge vocal expression
of emotion was positively related to age. Fenster ( 1 967), using a similar
standard content (non-filtered) method, and McCluskey (1974), em-ploying both standard content and filtered speech samples, also found
that the ability to identify emotion in vocal expressions improves with
age. Most recently, Rosenthal and his co-workers have also noticed a
pronounced age effect with their PONS test, such that subjects exhib-
ited increased sensitivity to both filtered and randomly spliced speech
with age (Rosenthal e t al. 1979).To date, most developmental studies have dealt with American or
Canadian subjects. It would seem useful, then, to extend the scope ofinvestigation and approach the development of emotional sensitivityfrom a cross-cultural perspective. In the research at hand, Canada andMexico were chosen as the comparison cultures, largely because theyare so radically different from one another. Despite the fact that theyare both technically North Americans, pronounced differences in “emo-
tional style” seem to exist between Canadians and Mexicans. From ananecdotal point of view, Canadians often describe Mexicans as being“Latin blooded” and “highly emotional”. Conversely, Canadians andother Anglo races are typically stereotyped by Mexicans as being cold,
aloof, and “mechanial” (cf: Lewis 196 1 ) .
At an empirical level, there is evidence to indicate that emotional
expression does in fact vary from culture to culture. Specifically, with
respect to nonverbal communicative patterns, clear cultural differences
exist in terms of size of personal space zones, posture and angle of ori-
entation in interpersonal interaction, volume and tone of voice, and
amount of gesturing, eye-contact, and bodily-contact (cf: Albas e t al.
1976;Birdwhistell 1963;Hall 1959; McCluskey and Albas 1978; Mehra-
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122 K .W.Mccluskey, D.C. lbas /Emotional content of speech
Mexican children, adolescents, and adults had smaller personal space
zones (and engaged in more bodily-contact) than either black or whiteAmericans. The nonverbal styles of expressing emotion were different
between the Mexican and American subjects, and differences found in
childhood tended to persist into adult life. Further, in a preliminarystudy examining sensitivity to tone of voice, Mexican children aged six
through 11 were found to identify the emotional content of filteredspeech more accurately than Canadian children of corresponding age
(McCluskey et al. 1975).For the purposes of the present study, the issue is whether or not the
subtle nonverbal differences between the Canadian (Anglo) and Mexi-can (Latin) cultures extend to even the tonal level. Although there is
some empirical support for the intuitive notion that communication of
affect differs in the two cultures (cf:Argyle 1972; Mehrabian 1972),the question as to whether there are cross-cultural differences in sensi-tivity to the emotional content of speech has not been adequately ex-plored. Indeed, there seems to be only one study addressing itself tothis issue (McCluskey e t al. 1975). The major amof the present
research, then, was to compare the ability of Canadian and Mexicansubjects of various ages to judge the affective content of filtered vocalexpressions recorded by Canadian (English-speaking) and Mexican(Spanish-speaking) communicators.
Virtually all research involving recitation of non-meaningful material
and standard content has shown that children are able to judge emotionin speech more accurately as they grow older (Dimitrovsky 1964;Fenster 1967; Gates 1927). Also, with filtered speech where there were
no words or verbal content for the children to “hook onto”, the samegeneral trend has been reported (McCluskey 1974). In light of suchresearch, it was hypothesized that:
(1) there would be a progressive increase with age in children’s abilityto identify the emotional content of filtered speech in both theCanadian and Mexican cultures.
As well, since no complete developmental comparison between Cana-
dians and Mexicans has been undertaken, it was decided to presentspeech samples to Canadian and Mexican subjects of various ages (ie.,
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K.W. McCluskey,D.C. Ibas Emotional mntent of speech 123
learned early in th e chi ldhood years tend t o persis t into ad ul tho od, it
was felt that any cross-cultural differences in sensitivity to tone might
well perseverate through the entire life cycle. It is known that certain
differences exist in th e comm unication of e mo tion in the Anglo and
Latin cultures (Argyle 19 72 ; Baxter 19 70 ; Hall 1 9 5 9; McCluskey et al.
19 75 ; McCluskey et al. 19 73 ; Mehrabian 1972). Given what research
there is in the area, and assuming that the widespread popular belief
th at Mexicans are extremely em otio na l may perhaps have som e basis in
fact, th e most logical and parsimonious ex pe ctati on was tha t:
(2 ) Mexican subjects a t all age levels would ide ntify th e em otio nal con-ten t of th e f i l tered speech mo re accurately than Canadians.
Although no t mu ch work has been do ne in th e area, there are indica-tions t ha t cross-cultural differences exist in t h e transmission as well as
in the reception of affective information (McCluskey e t al. 1975) .
Although i t might be premature to s ta te i t as a formal hypothesis , it
was expected th at Mexican speakers would be able t o comm unicate th e
em otio n th ey intended more effectively tha n Canadians.
The experimmt
M e t h o d
S u b j e c t s
Sixty boys from the Lord Selkirk School Division no. 11,Selkirk, Manitoba, Can-
ada, and 60 from schools in Colonia del Valle, Mexico City, Mexico, served as Ss.
More specifically, 15 boys from each country at each of the ages 5 , 9, 13, and 17took part. N o S at any age level was within two months of a birthday at the time
the study was run.
As well, 15 male teachers at each of the mean age levels 25, 45, and 65 were
selected from bot h Manitoba and Mexico City schools. Due to the difficulty in find-
ing enough individuals at each age level, Ss ranged (plus or minus two years) around
the mean ages listed above. That is, the ages actually ranged from 23-27,43-47,
and 63-67. All Ss in the 65 year-old group had retired from active teaching (but
were contacted through their former schools). No S whose I.Q. was known to be
above or below the normal range (on th e Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Quick
Test, or any group intelligence test) was included in the sample. As well, the hearing
of every S participating in the study was tested within normal limits on a Bell Tone
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12 4 K. .Mccluskey, D.C. Albas 1Emotional content of peech
tro l fo r th is variable. All Ss in Selkirk w ere chosen from “m iddle class” schools, and
each student’s cumulative file was checked with regard to father’s occupation and
family econo mic background. T he same general procedure was followed in Mexico,where all b u t the lowest class schools are private institutions . Since all Mexican stu-
dents in the study attended private schools, their families most probably had rela-
tively good incomes. And since all adult Ss in both cultures were (o r had been)
teachers, they too would likely fall roughly in the “m iddle” socioe conom ic class
bracket.
App arat us and measuring instrument
Th e original speech samples were recorded on a Sony Stere o Cassette Deck, modelTC-199SD. Th ese samples were the n rendered unintelligibIe thro ugh t h e use of an
elec tron ic filter, which passed frequencies from 100-4 50 cycles per secon d witha 60-decibel per octave attenuation at th e uppe r level. A second Sony Stereo Cas-sette Deck was used during the filtering proced ure. After filtering, the fin al samples
were presented to Ss via ex ternal speakers (S ony Spea ker Sy stem Model S S - 2 2 5 0 ) .
In several studie s of emotional communication, adult Ss are asked t o choo se th e
one particular word from a checklist of adjectives that they feel best describes the
emotional content of each vocal expression (Davitz and Davitz 1959; Soskin and
Kauffman 1961). However, when dealing with Ss of various ages, it is inappropria te
to use an exp erim enta l task involving either reading or w riting, since age differences
in these abili t ies may confound results . Consequ ently, in something of an attem pt
to control for this problem, all Ss were asked to make their identification of each
speech sample by pointing to one of fo ur stick figure drawings that represented thefo ur em otio nal states under consideration (Le. . happiness, sadness, love, and anger).
Each picture was drawn on a separate card, and the cards were presented in random
order to each S. The stick figure drawings used here were identical to those origi-
nated by Dimitrovsky (1964) .
Speech samples
Thre e Canadian and three Mexican elementary school teachers, all female and all
selected b y the ir principal fo r their “sensitivity”, were asked t o express vocally t heemotions of happiness, sadness, love, and anger. Each of these female teache rs was
between 25 and 35 years of age. Since the three teachers in each cu lture expressed
each of the four emotional meanings, there was a total of 24 speech samplesrecorded. The order in which the four emotions were acted was randomized for
each speaker. However, i t was stipulated th at n o m ore th an tw o speakers could be
asked t o comm unicate the same emotion f irst . In addi t ion , the order in which the
emotions were expressed had to be different for al l teachers.
T o avoid artif iciali ty arising from recitation of meaningless or neutral material,
each Canadian teacher was allowed t o say any tw o sentences (in English) th at came
to mind in a n a t t e mp t to simulate each of th e four emotions. Similarly, th e Mexi-can teachers attempted to express the four emotional states in Spanish. Each
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K.W.McCluskey. D.C. Albas /Emotional content of peech 12 5
samples. Each vocal expression was considered to communicate a particular emo-
tional state simply because the speaker intended to express the emotion in ques-
tion. Also, prior to filtering, the speech samples were played to and rated by tenmale teachers (Canadian samples were rated by Canadian teachers and Mexican sam-
ples by Mexican teachers). Before any sample was included for use in th e study, at
least eight of the ten judges had t o agree that the speaker was indeed communi-
cating the emotion she intended to communicate.
After the 24 samples were recorded, they were arranged on tape in random order
(with the restrictions that no emotion could appear more than twice in a row, no
more than two speech samples from any one speaker could appear in succession,
and no more than two teachers from the same culture could show up in succession).
Following this randomization procedure, the semantic content of the speech was
removed by means of the electronic filtering device.
Procedure
The procedure paralleled Dimitrovsky’s (1964) methodology as closely as possible.
All Canadian S s in every age group were seen individually by the same experimenter
(who of course gave the instructions in English). Similarly, all Mexican Ss were seen
by a single Mexican experimenter (giving exactly the same instructions translated
in to Spanish). The experimental situation was as similar as possible in both coun-
tries.
S s in each age group were trained to associate each of the four pictorial represen-
tations with the appropriate corresponding emotional state. In other words, theywere required to point to the happy woman, the sad woman, the angry woman, and
the loving woman. This procedure was repeated until a criterion of two correct
identifications of all four drawings was reached N o S had any difficulty with this
task.
Canadian Ss were told that they were going to hear the voices of ladies speaking
from “far away”, and that they would not be able to make out the words clearly.
They were then given a slightly modified version of Dimitrovsky’s (1964) instruc-
tions, which read:
You are going to hear different ladies say th ings in different ways. Some will sound happy,some sad, some angry, and some loving. Listen to each one and point to the lady it sounds ike.
Does it sound like the happy lady, the sad lady, the angry lady, or the loving lady?
All Mexican S s were given exactly the same instructions in Spanish.
The filtered recordings were than played to Ss, who made their 24 choices.
After hearing each speech sample, each S had a lOsec interval to point to the stick
figure drawing that he thought best represented that particular vocal expression.
Each response made by each S to each stimulus was recorded. In the rare instances
when an S took longer than 10 sec to respond, the tape was stopped until he made
his judgment. No speech sample was played more than once.
Resul t s
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126 K. .Mccluskey, D.C. Albas 1Emot ional content of speech
th e necessary err or values, an analysis o f variance containing seven levels of age, tw o
levels of cult ure of listene r, and tw o levels of culture of speaker was performed on
these d ata. Since directional hy potheses w ere indicated, tests were done by [Ipriori(planned) comparisons in order to maximize power. In essence, the comparisons
revealed that all main effects were significant. When all Ss in both cultures were
considered, tests of trend yielded significant linear ( F =61.90, df= 1,196, p <0.01) a n d q u a d r a t i c ( F = 8 1 . 4 7 , df= 1,196, p < O . O I ) age trends. As well, overallplanned comparisons revealed significant effects for culture of listener ( F =25.35,df= 1,196, p <0.01) and culture of speaker ( F =163.71, df= 1,196, p <0.01).
The mean scores for all age levels in both cultures are presented graphically infig. 1 .
Fig. 1 , then shows the responses of Canadian and Mexican Ss of v arious ages to
th e 12 vocal expressions simulated by C anadian speakers and to th e 12 samplesenacted by Mexican speakers. The significant age effect is accounted for by the
gradual and progressive improvement in ability as Ss get older. From 5 through 25
years of age, there was a n increase in accuracy from every younger to every olderage level. At the 25 year-old level, however, there was a levelling off, and for the
oldest age groups (i.e.. the 45 and 6 5 year-olds), there was even a decrease in accu-
racy as compared to the performance of the 2 5 year-old group.
t
11
/--
a 1w
2 1
Speaker Listener
Mexican
Canadian Mexican HCanadian D-----cI
Mexican
Canadian
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K . W. McCluskey, D.C. Ibas /Emotional mntent o f speech 12 7
In terms of age effects, tests for trend involved pooling of error terms (cf Kirk
1969). These tests for trend showed that Ss in general became more accurate with
age in all four conditions shown in fig. 1. That is, there were significant linear
trends for Canadian Ss listening to Canadian speakers ( F=30.50, df =1,388, p <0.01), for Canadian Ss listening to Mexican speakers ( F =29.55, d f = 1,388, p <0.01), for Mexican Ss listening to Canadian speakers ( F = 24.81, df= 1,388, p <O.Ol), and for Mexican Ss listening to Mexican speakers ( F = 26.13, df= 1,388,
However, as fig. 1 indicates, scores do tend to level off with increasing age, peak-
ing at 25 years and falling off somewhat thereafter. This decrease in sensitivity after
25 years of age appeared to be meaningful, as tests of trend also revealed significant
quadratic trends for Canadians listening to Canadian samples ( F =31.05, df=
1,388, p <0.01), Canadians listening to Mexican samples ( F = 45.30, df= 1,388,
p <0.01), Mexicans listening to Canadian samples ( F = 33.54, df= 1,388, p <0.01), and Mexicans listening to Mexican speech (F=36.88, d f = 1,388, p <0.01).
As fig. 1 shows, the significant listener effect is accounted for by the obvious
superiority of Mexican Ss in ability t o identify the emotional content of bot h Cana-
dian and Mexican speech samples. Indeed, at every age level examined in the study,
the Mexican Ss were more accurate in judging the emotional content of the voice
samples than were the Canadians. Planned comparisons revealed that this cultural
difference was significant at the 5 year-old ( F =4.67, df= 1,196, p <0.05) and
9year-old (F=8 .29,d f=l ,1 96,p< O.Ol) level s , but not at the 13 (F =3 .6 9, df =1,196, p>0.05), 17 (F =3.69, df= 1,196, p > 0 . 0 5 ) , 25 ( F =2.43,'df = 1,196,
p >0.05), 45 ( F =2.07, df= 1,196, p >O.OS), and 65 year-olds ( F =2.07, df =
1,196, p >0.05) levels.
Fig. 1 also depicts the significant culture of speaker effect. Both Canadian and
Mexican Ss were clearly more sensitive to the emotional content of the Mexican
speech samples than to the Canadian speech. Planned comparisons showed that
both Canadian Ss ( F = 80.30, df= 1,196, p <0.01) and Mexican Ss ( F =83.43,
df= 1,196, p<O.Ol ) were more sensitive to the Mexican speech than to the
Canadian speech.
In summary, he major findings of t he present study were: first, discriminationability was a progressively increasing function of age from childhood through t o the
25 year-old level. At this point, things seemed t o level off, until eventually the 65
year-old group performed significantly more poorly than the other adult groups.
Second, Mexican Ss were able to identify the emotional content of speech more
accurately than the Canadians. Third, Ss at all age levels in both cultures identified
the emotional content of Mexican vocal expressions more accurately than Canadian
speech.
p <0.01).
Discussion
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128 K .W . Mccluskey, D.C. Albas 1Emotional content of peech
(Dimitrovsky 1964; Fenster 1967; Gates 1927; McCluskey 1974;
McCluskey e t al. 1975). Interestingly, the age trend was the same in
both cultures; from 5 through to 25 years of age, Canadian and Mexi-
can subjects showed a progressive increase in ability to identify the
emotional content of filtered speech. It was also interesting to note that
subjects tended to plateau and level off a t the 17 through 45 year-old
age groups. This finding is consistent with Rosenthal e t aZ.’s (1979)
work with the PONS test, which also showed that nonverbal decoding
ability levelled off between 20 and 30 years of age. Even though there
were some controls in terms of hearing and I.Q., it still appears that
humans function less efficiently as they reach “old age”. Certainly, the
data here indicate, at least with respect to tone of voice, that 6 5 year-
olds perform noticeably less accurateIy than the other adult groups.
Since hypothesis (2 ) was also upheld ( i e . , Mexican subjects of all
ages judged the speech samples significantly more accurately than their
Canadian counterparts), the results provide empirical evidence for the
intuitive notion that Mexicans are generally more sensitive to the emo-
tional content of the communication than are Canadians. Since this dif-
ference does in fact hold true at every single age level examined, itwould seem that cultural differences in the vocal reception of emotion
are established early in childhood.and perserverate through to old age.
As Baxter (1970) contends, cultural responses learned in childhood
appear to have a lasting effect.
In addition, the data show that Mexican speakers communicated
emotion more effectively than the Canadians (ie.. they were more fre-
quently able to communicate what they intended). Although there
were only three speakers from each country, this finding lends supportto the idea that differences exist in the transmission (encoding) as well
as in the reception (decoding) of affective information. Like Argyle
( 1 9 7 3 , who noted that Japanese are more sensitive to facial expres-
sions from cultures other than their own, the results here show that
Canadians are more accurate at judging speech from Mexicans than sam-
ples from other Canadians. Canadian speakers may simply be less
expressive than Mexicans, or there may be a different code operating
(ie., different “style” of expressing emotion). In any case, it does
indeed seem to matter greatly “who communicates to whom” (cf Mc-
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K .W.McCluskey. D.C. Albas f Emotional content of speech 129
individuals from cultures that were “dissimilar” to the U.S. scoredpoorly on the decoding test (Rosenthal et al. 1979). That is, the more
cultural dissimilarity between the encoder and decoder, the less accu-rate the communication. This finding is not entirely consistent with thepresent results, which showed that Mexicans were more sensitive totone than Canadians regardless of the nationality of the encoder. This
could be due to the lack of comparability in Rosenthal’s Mexican andCanadian samples (there did not appear to be careful matching on ageand other variables), or to a difference between auditoryanly decoding(used in the present study) and decoding involving both auditory and
visual cues. Still, while the results of this study differ somewhat fromRosenthal’s, they are nonetheless in accord with Argyle’s (1975) inter-pretation that people can be more sensitive to nonverbal communica-tion from “outsiders” than to intra-cultural messages.
In an attempt to keep the design manageable and t o highlight what-ever differences might exist (cf.McCluskey and Albas 1978), the studyat hand focused on a single communication pattern: female speaker tomale receiver. While this approach did in fact facilitate these ends, it
comes at the cost of limiting generalizability, in that we cannot simplyassume that the same results would have been obtained ushg a differ-ent communication pattern. Another note of caution - pointing outthat the performance of subjects from one culture should not be viewedas being “better” or “worse” than that of subjects from the other -
might also be in order here. As Pike (1966) argues, to understand a par-ticular system or culture, it is necessary to look at it from within (ie.,
take an “emic” perspective) rather than from without (an external,“etic” view). In many ways, “better” and “worse” are etic and ethno-centric terms - “different” is perhaps more appropriate.
The findings here suggest that cultural differences in emotional per-ception are established ear1y.h life. Indeed, it may well be that Mexi-cans are more sensitive to speech because of learning experiences duringsocialization in childhood; the Mexican life style may simply be more“emotional” than that in Canadian society. Should this indeed be thecase, the implications for international understanding (especially withrespect to travelling, political negotiations, and the like) are self-evi-
dent. If, as this research suggests, people from different cultures inter-pret emotion in speech differently, effective cross-cultural communica-
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130 K . W. Mccluskey, D.C. Albas 1Emotional content of speech
Obviously, it can be difficult to communicate between cultures. For
one thing, tonal aspects of speech (such as pitch, strength, length, and
pause) differ from language to language, and may create problems incross-cultural communication (Key 1975). With whites and Native
Indians, at least, it appears that individuals from one culture are more
adept at judging tonal affect from members of their own group (Albas
e t al. 1976). Possibly, through socialization and historical twists of fate,the Mexican culture, language, or whatever has become more “emo-tionalyy han ours. On the other hand, it may even be conceivable thatspeakers of English are more likely to express affect in the verbal than
in the vocal channel. In any case, for representatives of the two culturesto communicate effectively, it would be tremendously helpful for each
to “take the place of the other” and try to become more aware of how
the other reacts nonverbally and emotionally.It may pay researchers to try to get more actively and pragmatically
involved in improving intercultural communication through nonverbaltraining; for it has been shown that with practice, subjects can becomemore sensitive to nonverbal cues (Rosenthal e t al. 1979). Already, non-
verbal signals have been used effectively to help Spanish-speakingpeople learn to speak English, and vice versa. Triandis (1975), going yet
a step further in this regard, speaks of “cultural assimilators” - raining
devices designed to help individuals become more familiar with and
more sensitive to the attitudes, values, and communicative styles of
people from other cultures. Work along these lines - imed at improv-
ing inter-cultural communication - as a great deal of promise in termsof helping people from different cultures relate and communicate with
each other in more realistic and meaningful ways.
References
Albas, D.C., K.W. McCluskey and C.A. Albas, 19 76 . Perception of the emotional content of
speech: a comparison of two Canadian groups. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology 7,
481 -490.
Argyle, M., 197 2. The psychology of interpersonal behaviour. Baltimore: Penguin.
Argyle, M., 197 5. Bodily communication. London: Methuen.
Barcus, F.E., 19 59 . Comm unications content: analysis of the research, 1900-19 58. Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Illinois.
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132 K . W . McCluskey, D.C. Albas 1Em otional content of speech
Le but de la prksente recherche est d’dvaluer et de comparer les capacitds respectives chez des
sujets canadiens et mexicains h identifier les dm otion s vihic ulies par le parole. Des enseignantes
canadiennes et mexicaines, utilisant des mots qu’elles choisissaient dans leur propre langue, onttent6 de simuler quatre 6tats hmotifs, a savoir la joie, la tristesse, l’amour et la coltke. Apris
I’enregistrement initial, ces 6chantillons furent ffltrds dlectroniquement d i n d’en &miner le
contenu s imant ique , tout en laissant intactes les tonalitds d u discours. Ces expressions vocales
fd trie s fure nt ensuite dco uties par des sujets canadiens et mexicains igds de 5 . 9 , 1 3 , 1 7 , 2 5 , 4 5
e t 65 ans. Chez les groupes Bgds de 5 a 25 ans, a capacitd d’identifier I’imotion exprimie aug-
mente progressivement avec l’ige. Par co ntr e, cett e capacitd atteignit un plafond et dventuelle-
ment mEme diminua, & tel que les sujets Igds de 65 ans exdc utirent cet te t lch e avec moins de
pr6cision q ue les autres groupes adultes. Dans l’ensemble les sujets mexicains se sont riv61ds plus
sensibles i 1’6motion vdh iculk par la parole que les sujets canadiens, et ce d e facon significative.
De plus, tous les sujets, canadiens et mexicains, on t jug6 les ichantillons des “orateurs” mexi-
cains avec plus de precision que ceux des “orateurs” canadiens,
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