A resource of validated affective and neutral sentences to assess identification of emotion in spoken language after a brain injury.
OBJECTIVE
The ability to identify emotions in spoken language is an essential component of communication and could be disrupted in persons with brain injury. Current tools to assess this function show important shortcomings. The aim is to present a set of validated and linguistically equated lexical sentences that can be used to separate the impact of lexical content and prosody on the processing of emotion in speech in persons with brain injury.


METHODS
Using six-point Likert scales, a set of 125 sentences, carefully matched for linguistic variables, were rated by a group of young adults (n = 48) on their suitability to represent a particular emotion (anger, fear, happiness and sadness) in their lexical content.


RESULTS
The findings identified a set of 50 sentences that were reliably associated with one particular emotion only or no emotion at all (neutral). Using less stringent criteria, 94 sentences were also found to be good representatives for these affective categories.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings generated a robust set of validated lexical stimuli necessary to reliably identify the specific contributions of verbal and prosodic information on difficulties in identifying emotions in speech with persons with brain injury.
Department of Speech-Language Pathology, Oral Dynamics Lab, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. boaz.ben.david@utoronto.ca
Boaz M
BM
Ben-David
Pascal H H M
PH
van Lieshout
Talia
T
Leszcz
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult