title: Did you or I say pretty, rude or brief? An ERP study of the effects of speaker's identity on emotional word processing.
abstract: During speech comprehension, multiple cues need to be integrated at a millisecond speed, including semantic information, as well as voice identity and affect cues. A processing advantage has been demonstrated for self-related stimuli when compared with non-self stimuli, and for emotional relative to neutral stimuli. However, very few studies investigated self-other speech discrimination and, in particular, how emotional valence and voice identity interactively modulate speech processing. In the present study we probed how the processing of words' semantic valence is modulated by speaker's identity (self vs. non-self voice). Sixteen healthy subjects listened to 420 prerecorded adjectives differing in voice identity (self vs. non-self) and semantic valence (neutral, positive and negative), while electroencephalographic data were recorded. Participants were instructed to decide whether the speech they heard was their own (self-speech condition), someone else's (non-self speech), or if they were unsure. The ERP results demonstrated interactive effects of speaker's identity and emotional valence on both early (N1, P2) and late (Late Positive Potential - LPP) processing stages: compared with non-self speech, self-speech with neutral valence elicited more negative N1 amplitude, self-speech with positive valence elicited more positive P2 amplitude, and self-speech with both positive and negative valence elicited more positive LPP. ERP differences between self and non-self speech occurred in spite of similar accuracy in the recognition of both types of stimuli. Together, these findings suggest that emotion and speaker's identity interact during speech processing, in line with observations of partially dependent processing of speech and speaker information.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychophysiology Laboratory, Psychology Research Center (CIPsi), School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal; Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, VA Boston Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, United States; Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. Electronic address: ana.pinheiro@psi.uminho.pt.
authors.forename: Ana P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Pinheiro
authors.affiliation: Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, VA Boston Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Neguine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rezaii
authors.affiliation: Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, VA Boston Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, United States; Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Paul G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Nestor
authors.affiliation: International Studies in Computational Linguistics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Andréia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rauber
authors.affiliation: Neural Dynamics Laboratory, Research Service, VA Boston Healthcare System, and Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Kevin M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Spencer
authors.affiliation: Clinical Neuroscience Division, Laboratory of Neuroscience, VA Boston Healthcare System-Brockton Division, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Brockton, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Niznikiewicz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014831:Voice