Vocal Communication of Emotional Meaning Among Normal and Disturbed Children

Abstract

In this study, both normal and disturbed Mexican boys, speaking whatever words came to mind, attempted to communicate the emotions of happiness, sadness, love, and anger. After the initial recording of these simulations of affective state, an electronic filtering device (designed to remove verbal meaning while leaving intact the tonal aspects of speech) was employed to render the vocal expressions unintelligible. Subsequent to filtering, the speech samples recorded by the normal and disturbed children (“senders”) were played to other normal and disturbed boys (“receivers”) of corresponding age. When both heard the speech samples from the normal senders, normal receivers were able to identify the emotional content more accurately than disturbed receivers. However, disturbed receivers performed more accurately than normals when judging the speech from the disturbed senders. This highly significant interaction indicated that “who communicates to whom” seems to be a crucial factor in the vocal transmission of emotion.