I know that voice! Mothers' voices influence children's perceptions of emotional intensity.

ABSTRACT: The ability to interpret others' emotions is a critical skill for children's socioemotional functioning. Although research has emphasized facial emotion expressions, children are also constantly required to interpret vocal emotion expressed at or around them by individuals who are both familiar and unfamiliar to them. The current study examined how speaker familiarity, specific emotions, and the acoustic properties that comprise affective prosody influenced children's interpretations of emotional intensity. Participants were 51 7- and 8-year-olds presented with speech stimuli spoken in happy, angry, sad, and nonemotional prosodies by both each child's mother and another child's mother unfamiliar to the target child. Analyses indicated that children rated their own mothers as more intensely

SUBMITTER: Stoop TB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9401094 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature