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Cross-cultural emotional prosody recognition: Evidence from Chinese and British listeners

Paulmann, Silke, Uskul, Ayse K. (2014) Cross-cultural emotional prosody recognition: Evidence from Chinese and British listeners. Cognition and Emotion, 28 . pp. 230-244. (doi:10.1080/02699931.2013.812033) (KAR id:34876)

Abstract

This cross-cultural study of emotional tone of voice recognition tests the in-group advantage hypothesis (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) employing a quasi-balanced design. Individuals of Chinese and British background were asked to recognize pseudo-sentences produced by Chinese and British native speakers, displaying one of seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, neutral tone of voice, sad, and surprise). Findings revealed that emotional displays were recognized at rates higher than predicted by chance; however, members of each cultural group were more accurate in recognizing the displays communicated by a member of their own cultural group than a member of the other cultural group. Moreover, the evaluation of error matrices indicates that both culture groups relied on similar mechanism when recognizing emotional displays from the voice. Overall, the study reveals evidence for both universal and culture-specific principles in vocal emotion recognition.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/02699931.2013.812033
Uncontrolled keywords: Emotion, Culture, Tone of voice, In-group hypothesis, Bilingualism
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Ayse Uskul
Date Deposited: 30 Jul 2013 10:35 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2021 12:46 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/34876 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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