Processing of Emotional Utterances: Is Vocal Tone Really More Significant than Verbal Content in Japanese?

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Abstract

An affective priming paradigm was used to test the hypothesis that when presented with an emotionally spoken emotional word, speakers of a high-context language (e.g., Japanese) process its vocal tone more thoroughly than its verbal content. Native Japanese speakers were presented with such an utterance (prime), immediately followed by a neutrally spoken emotionally valenced word (target). They were to judge the emotional meaning of the target as quickly as possible. In support of the foregoing hypothesis, Study 1 showed that this judgment is made more quickly if the prime is spoken in a congruous emotional vocal tone than if it is spoken in an incongruous tone. However, no comparable effect was found as a function of the emotional verbal meaning of the prime. This was the case despite the fact that emotional vocal tones of primes were considerably less extreme than their verbal meanings. Furthermore, Study 2 predicted and found that when a prime is spoken in a neutral tone of voice, the verbal meaning of the prime has a reliable priming effect. Implications for culture, communication, and cognition are discussed.

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