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- All Subjects: phonemes
- Creators: McBeath, Michael K.
Description
Neuroscientific research has verified that humans have specialized brain areas used in the production and perception of language. It is speculated that these brain areas may also be involved in the perception and expression of emotions. A recent study supports the idea of an auditory equivalent to visually recognizable emotions, finding that the words containing the phoneme /i:/ as in “beat” were rated more positively and those with the phoneme /^/ as in “but” were rated more negatively. It was theorized that these results support that the same facial musculature used in producing visually recognizable expressions also favors specific phonemic sounds. The present study replicates this prior research using a new methodology in which participants matched verbalized monosyllabic nonsense pseudo-words to positive or negative cartoon pictures. We hypothesized that pseudo-words containing the sounds /i:/ would be matched with pictures that are more emotionally positive and ones containing the sounds /^/ would be matched with pictures that are more negative. Data collected from 119 undergraduate student volunteers from a Southwestern public university confirmed our hypotheses and exhibit the same pattern found in previous research supporting that specific vowel phonemes are matched with emotional valence. Our findings are the first to confirm this phoneme-emotion relationship with verbalized sounds and pictures. The results support the idea that the musculature associated with positive and negative facial expressions also favors production of specific phonemic sounds that listeners recognize and associate with specific emotions.
ContributorsBarnes, Heather Lee (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Thesis director) / McBeath, Michael K. (Thesis director) / Yu, Christine S.P. (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12
Description
This study expands on findings by Yu, McBeath, & Glenberg (2019) which demonstrated a relationship between the pronunciation of English vowel phonemes and emotional valence due to embodied cognition. That study found that single syllable words containing the phoneme /i:/ (as in “gleam”) were reliably rated as more positive than matched words containing the phoneme /ʌ/ (as in “glum”). The findings are consistent with the idea that the facial musculature when smiling is more conducive to making the /i:/ sound, while that of frowning or grimacing is more conducive to making the /ʌ/ sound. That study only compared the phonemes /i:/ and /ʌ/, which are opposite extremes of phoneme similarity (second formant frequency). The present study expands on this finding by testing the relative emotional valence ratings of matched single-syllable words containing /i:/ vs /ʌ/ plus two intermediate phonemes, /ɪ/ (as in “bit”), and /ɔ/ (as in “bought”). The new findings replicate the Gleam-Glum effect, and provide support for a weak ordering hypothesis for the intermediate phonemes, but not a strong ordering. The weak ordering hypothesis is that single-syllable words containing a middle vowel phoneme that is intermediate to /i:/ and /ʌ/ in musculature and acoustic features are also generally rated as intermediate in emotional valence. The strong ordering hypothesis is that the intermediate phonemes are each differentially rated in emotional valance in precisely the same order as determined acoustically. The pattern of results found is consistent with the Russell Circumplex Model of emotion at a cursory level, but individual emotions do not fully conform to a simple 2-D model that generalizes to similarity judgments of phonemes. Nevertheless, the work supports that facial musculature associated with visually discernible emotions generally relates to a phonetic acoustic continuum.
ContributorsLobato, Theresa Annette (Author) / McBeath, Michael K. (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur M. (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05