title: The effects of sad prosody on hemispheric specialization for words processing.
abstract: This study examined the effect of sad prosody on hemispheric specialization for word processing using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. A dichotic listening task combining focused attention and signal-detection methods was conducted to evaluate the detection of a word spoken in neutral or sad prosody. An overall right ear advantage together with leftward lateralization in early (150-170 ms) and late (240-260 ms) processing stages was found for word detection, regardless of prosody. Furthermore, the early stage was most pronounced for words spoken in neutral prosody, showing greater negative activation over the left than the right hemisphere. In contrast, the later stage was most pronounced for words spoken with sad prosody, showing greater positive activation over the left than the right hemisphere. The findings suggest that sad prosody alone was not sufficient to modulate hemispheric asymmetry in word-level processing. We posit that lateralized effects of sad prosody on word processing are largely dependent on the psychoacoustic features of the stimuli as well as on task demands.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los-Angeles 90095-1563, USA; Department of Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52100, Israel. Electronic address: rotem.leshem@biu.ac.il.
authors.forename: Rotem
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Leshem
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, Levinsky College of Education, Tel-Aviv 61481, Israel.
authors.forename: Yossi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Arzouan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ashkelon Academic College, Ashkelon 78211, Israel.
authors.forename: Rinat
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Armony-Sivan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Emotion; Hemispheric specialization; Prosody; Speech perception