Comparing methodologies for emotion perception ratings in clear and conversational speech

Several studies have found that “anger” is perceived more often in clear speech compared to conversational speech. To date, however, these studies have all used a forced-choice paradigm for emotion perception, asking listeners to select emotions from a set of six choices (“anger,” “fear,” “disgust,” “happiness,” “sadness,” and “neutral”). Thus, the results of earlier studies are limited to these emotion categories. The current study expands upon previous results to determine if speaking style differences in perceived emotion are also found using (a) dimensional ratings of emotion, namely arousal and valence, and (b) single-word, free-response emotion ratings. A subset of stimuli that have previously been rated using categorical emotion ratings in Young et al. (2024) was presented to 20 healthy young adult listeners. For each stimulus, listeners rated either (a) the emotion category, arousal, and valence, or (b) the emotion they perceived using a single word. It is hypothesized that clear speech will have (a) higher arousal and lower valence than conversational speech using dimensional measures of emotion perception, and (b) that negative emotion words, such as “anger,” “annoyance,” and “irritation,” will be reported more frequently for clear speech compared to conversational speech using free-response measures of emotion perception.