Preschoolers' Attention to Emotional Prosody in an Unfamiliar Language

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Communication often extends beyond the meaning conveyed through words alone. Variations in pitch levels, pitch contours, and rate of speech, collectively known as emotional prosody, help convey emotions in language (Frick, 1985). For example, the statement “I just received my exam grade” could imply satisfaction with the result or disappointment at one’s performance depending on the speaker’s tone of voice. Quick and accurate detection of prosodic cues is a critical element of effective communication.
Sensitivity to prosody emerges early in infancy (Wu et al., 2017). By the time children reach the preschool years, they can use prosodic information to make sophisticated judgements. Preschoolers can make use of prosodic cues to resolve referential ambiguity: situations wherein a speaker’s utterance does not reveal the intended referent (Khu et al., 2018; San Juan et al., 2017). Adults and school age-children are also sensitive to prosody in non-native languages (Pell & Skorup, 2008; Chornaki et al., 2018). Here we asked whether preschoolers are sensitive to prosodic cues in unfamiliar languages.
The present study examined English-speaking preschoolers’ use of emotional prosody presented in Arabic, an unfamiliar language, to resolve referential ambiguity. Four-year-old children (n = 31) were presented object arrays accompanied by Arabic utterances produced with happy-sounding, sad-sounding, or neutral prosody (e.g., Look at the [object]. Point to the [object]”. Arrays were comprised of two photographs of objects displayed on a screen. On critical trials, both objects belonged to the same category but differed in their association with positive or negative emotional prosody (e.g. an inflated and deflated ball, respectively). Neutral utterances served as filler trials. These trials included cognates, words that sound similar in English and Arabic, such that children would be able to identify the noun (e.g., dinosaur and balloon). Preschoolers’ eye gaze and pointing were recorded across the unfolding utterances. Eye gaze, assessed through a Tobii eye-tracker, was used as an implicit measure of processing while pointing was used as an explicit measure.
Critical trials were analyzed using linear mixed effects modeling which revealed no significant main effect of prosody type on proportion of fixations on the intended object (p =.70). Proportions of points to the correct object were not significantly different from chance. Hence, children did not look nor point at the object that matched the emotional prosody of the utterance. Instead, they fixated on the negative object (e.g., broken, dirty, etc.) regardless of prosody type, suggesting a negativity bias. Analysis of the filler trials revealed that children did look and point to the correct object in the presence of cognates. This indicates that children did indeed attend to the auditory stimuli.
Taken together, findings demonstrate that despite attending to the utterances, 4-year-olds did not use prosodic cues presented in an unfamiliar language to determine a speaker’s referential intent. Next, we will investigate preschoolers’ ability to associate prosodic cues in an unfamiliar language with emotional faces, a less cognitively demanding task.

Authors

• Yomna Waly, University of Calgary (U of C)
  Presenting Author

• Craig Chambers, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan A Graham, University of Calgary (U of C)
  Non-Presenting Author