NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1067901
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jun
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
Aging Affects Identification of Vocal Emotions in Semantically Neutral Sentences
Dupuis, Kate; Pichora-Fuller, M. Kathleen
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v58 n3 p1061-1076 Jun 2015
Purpose: The authors determined the accuracy of younger and older adults in identifying vocal emotions using the Toronto Emotional Speech Set (TESS; Dupuis & Pichora-Fuller, 2010a) and investigated the possible contributions of auditory acuity and suprathreshold processing to emotion identification accuracy. Method: In 2 experiments, younger and older adults with normal hearing listened to and identified vocal emotions in the TESS stimuli. The TESS consists of phrases with controlled syntactic, lexical, and phonological properties spoken by an older female talker and a younger female talker to convey 7 emotion conditions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, neutral, happiness, and pleasant surprise). Participants in both experiments completed audiometric testing; participants in Experiment 2 also completed 3 tests of suprathreshold auditory processing. Results: Identification by both age groups was above chance for all emotions. Accuracy was lower for older adults in both experiments. The pattern of results was similar across age groups and experiments. Auditory acuity did not predict identification accuracy for either age group in either experiment, nor did performance on tests of auditory processing in Experiment 2. Conclusions: These results replicate and extend previous findings concerning age-related differences in ability to identify vocal emotions and suggest that older adults' auditory abilities do not explain their difficulties in identifying vocal emotions.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Tel: 800-638-8255; Fax: 301-571-0457; e-mail: subscribe@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A