Evaluations by staff, residents, and community seniors of patronizing speech in the nursing home: impact of passive, assertive, or humorous responses

Two studies tested the impact of alternative communication in accommodation strategies. Nursing home staff and residents (and community-residing seniors in Study 2) rated nurse-resident conversational scenarios in which a resident responded passively, directly assertively, or humorously (indirectly assertively) to a patronizing nurse. The nurse then either maintained a patronizing manner or accommodated with a more respectful speech style. Even though all groups devalued the nurse who maintained a patronizing speech style, nursing home residents predictably showed the most acceptance. The directly assertive response by the resident elicited more devaluation of the nonaccommodating nurse than did either passive or humorous responses, but also the least favorable ratings of the resident. Ratings of the humorous response in Study 2 suggested that humor could be a good compromise response style for allowing the receiver of patronizing speech to express opposition to a request, yet still maintain an appearance of competence and politeness.     

Communication With Older Adults The Influence of Age Stereotypes,Context, and Communicator Age

Forty young, 40 middle-aged, and 40 older adults rated their beliefs about the vocal style that they would use in addressing two older targets—one fitting a negative (Despondent) and one a positive (Golden Ager) stereotype. Participants also gave oral messages to the two targets in either a hospital or community context. Supporting a stereotype-sensitive model of the communication and aging process, participants' beliefs and messages revealed a greater tendency to use patronizing talk with the Despondent target than with the Golden Ager. In addition, the extent and type of patronizing talk (overly nurturing or directive) to the targets was affected by the context in which the target was presented and the age of the communicator. In particular, the number of directive/patronizing messages to Golden Ager targets increased significantly in the hospital context. Finally, older participants were less likely to give patronizing messages to all targets than were younger participants.     

On the lateralization of emotional prosody: an event-related functional MR investigation

In order to investigate the lateralization of emotional speech we recorded the brain responses to three emotional intonations in two conditions, i.e., "normal" speech and "prosodic" speech (i.e., speech with no linguistic meaning, but retaining the 'slow prosodic modulations' of speech). Participants listened to semantically neutral sentences spoken with a positive, neutral, or negative intonation in both conditions and judged how positive, negative, or neutral the intonation was on a five-point scale. Core peri-sylvian language areas, as well as some frontal and subcortical areas were activated bilaterally in the normal speech condition. In contrast, a bilateral fronto-opercular region was active when participants listened to prosodic speech. Positive and negative intonations elicited a bilateral fronto-temporal and subcortical pattern in the normal speech condition, and more frontal activation in the prosodic speech condition. The current results call into question an exclusive right hemisphere lateralization of emotional prosody and expand patient data on the functional role of the basal ganglia during the perception of emotional prosody.     

A Swedish Version of the Regressive Imagery Dictionary: Effects of Alcohol and Emotional Enhancement on Primary–Secondary Process Relations

ABSTRACT: The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) measures the degree of primary and secondary process content in texts and verbal speech/writing. RID was translated into Swedish and 2 studies were performed to validate it. In Study 1, alcohol was used in a placebo design to induce a shift toward the dominance of primary over secondary process thinking. Surprisingly, the alcohol group showed indications of using more secondary process in written stories than both the control group and the placebo group, although there were no significant differences between the groups in primary and secondary process as measured with the Swedish RID. In Study 2, the participants watched either a neutral film or an action film, whereupon they wrote down an ending of their own choosing. The action film condition produced more primary process than the neutral film condition, as measured by the Swedish RID. These findings underline both alcohol dose relationships in behavioral studies and emotional state in primary–secondary process thinking relationships in creative expression. Above all, in validating the Swedish RID scope for new insights into processes involved creative performance is obtained.     

Facial and vocal cues of deception and honesty

Facial expressions and vocal cues (filtered speech) of honest and deceptive messages were examined in posed and spontaneous situations. The question of interest was the degree to which nonverbal cues transmit information about deception. Results indicated that (a) for both the facial and vocal channels, posing (as compared to spontaneous behavior) produced a higher level of communication accuracy; (b) facial expressions of deceptive (as compared to honest) messages were rated as less pleasant, while vocal expressions of deception were rated as less honest, less assertive, and less dominant, particularly in the posed condition; (c) the sender's ability to convey honesty was negatively correlated with his/her ability to convey deception, suggesting the existence of a demeanor bias—individual senders tend to appear and sound consistently honest (or dishonest) regardless of whether they deliver an honest or a deceptive message; (d) in the posing condition, the sender's abilities to convey honesty/deception via facial and vocal cues were positively and significantly correlated, whereas in the spontaneous condition they were not; and (e) senders whose full (unfiltered) speech indicated more involvement with their responses were judged as more honest from both their vocal (filtered speech) and facial cues, in both the honest and deceptive conditions.     

The differential contribution of facial expressions,prosody, and speech content to empathy

Background: Facial expressions, prosody, and speech content constitute channels by which information is exchanged. Little is known about the simultaneous and differential contribution of these channels to empathy when they provide emotionality or neutrality. Especially neutralised speech content has gained little attention with regards to influencing the perception of other emotional cues. Methods: Participants were presented with video clips of actors telling short-stories. One condition conveyed emotionality in all channels while the other conditions either provided neutral speech content, facial expression, or prosody, respectively. Participants judged the emotion and intensity presented, as well as their own emotional state and intensity. Skin conductance served as a physiological measure of emotional reactivity. Results: Neutralising channels significantly reduced empathic responses. Electrodermal recordings confirmed these findings. The differential effect of the communication channels on empathy prerequisites was that target emotion recognition of the other decreased mostly when the face was neutral, whereas decreased emotional responses attributed to the target emotion were especially present in neutral speech. Conclusion: Multichannel integration supports conscious and autonomous measures of empathy and emotional reactivity. Emotional facial expressions influence emotion recognition, whereas speech content is important for responding with an adequate own emotional state, possibly reflecting contextual emotion-appraisal.     

Effects of intelligibility on working memory demand for speech perception

Understanding low-intelligibility speech is effortful. In three experiments, we examined the effects of intelligibility on working memory (WM) demands imposed by perception of synthetic speech. In all three experiments, a primary speeded word recognition task was paired with a secondary WM-load task designed to vary the availability of WM capacity during speech perception. Speech intelligibility was varied either by training listeners to use available acoustic cues in a more diagnostic manner (as in Experiment 1) or by providing listeners with more informative acoustic cues (i.e., better speech quality, as in Experiments 2 and 3). In the first experiment, training significantly improved intelligibility and recognition speed; increasing WM load significantly slowed recognition. A significant interaction between training and load indicated that the benefit of training on recognition speed was observed only under low memory load. In subsequent experiments, listeners received no training; intelligibility was manipulated by changing synthesizers. Improving intelligibility without training improved recognition accuracy, and increasing memory load still decreased it, but more intelligible speech did not produce more efficient use of available WM capacity. This suggests that perceptual learning modifies the way available capacity is used, perhaps by increasing the use of more phonetically informative features and/or by decreasing use of less informative ones.     

Dependence of 'audio-phonatoric coupling' of speech rate and speech loudness]

The 'audio-phonatoric coupling' (APC) was investigated in two independent experiments. Slightly delayed auditory feedback (delay time 40 ms) of the subjects' own speech was used as experimental method. The first experiment was conducted to examine whether the strength of the APC depends on the speech rate. In this experiment 16 male Subjects (Ss) were required to utter the testword/tatatas/either with stress placing on the first or second syllable at two different speech rates (fast and slow). In 16% of the randomly chosen speech trials, the delayed auditory feedback (DAF; 40 ms delay) was introduced. It could be shown that the stressed phonation was significantly lengthened under the DAF condition. This lengthening was greater when Ss spoke slowly. The unstressed phonations were not influenced by the DAF condition. The second experiment was conducted to examine whether or not speech intensity effects APC. Nine male Ss were required to utter the testword/tatatas/either with stress placing on the first or second syllable using three different speech intensities (30 dB, 50 dB and 70 dB). In 16% of the randomly chosen speech trials DAF condition was introduced. It could be shown that speech intensity does not influence the DAF effect (lengthening of stressed phonation). These findings were taken as evidence that the auditory feedback of the subjects' own speech can be incorporated into speech control during ongoing speech. Obviously, this feedback information is efficient only during the production of stressed syllables, and varies as a function of speech rate. In addition, the significance of stressed syllables for the structuring of speech is discussed.     

The effect of combined arousal states on attitude change

An experiment was devised in which subjects either were given a choice or were given no choice to listen to a counter-attitudinal communication. For half the subjects (Interrupt condition) the tape of the communication broke during the concluding sentence of the speech. The other half of the subjects (No Interrupt condition) heard the speech in its entirety. A recall measure indicated that subjects in the Interrupt condition recalled significantly more arguments made in the communication than subjects who heard the complete speech. This was interpreted as being a Zeigarnik effect caused by arousal created by the interruption. The choice manipulation should have created dissonance and motivated attitude change. Consistent with dissonance theory, measures of attitude change showed that greater attitude change toward the position of the speech occurred in the Choice condition than in the No Choice condition. In addition, an interaction in which significantly greater change occurred in the Choice-Interrupt condition than any of the other conditions was obtained. Since both the choice and interruption manipulations were hypothesized to be arousing, it was speculated that, in the Choice-Interrupt condition, the arousal created by the cognitive inconsistency and by the interrupted task may have combined to yield the increased attitude change. The conditions under which arousal states might combine were discussed.     

Autonomy and defensiveness: experimentally increasing adaptive responses to health-risk information via priming and self-affirmation

Health information is often ineffective in motivating health-behaviour change. One way to improve information effectiveness might be to highlight autonomy, which is associated with less defensiveness and more adaptive psychological functioning. Three studies assessed whether experimentally elevating autonomy led to adaptive responses to risk information about alcohol consumption. In Study 1 (N?=?104), participants completed either an autonomy prime or a neutral prime task and read either risk information about the dangers of alcohol consumption or neutral information. Among high-risk participants in the autonomy prime condition, those who read risk information reported greater autonomous motivation towards moderate alcohol consumption than did those in the neutral information condition. Study 2 (N?=?157) compared two types of autonomy prime tasks with a neutral condition. For high-risk participants who read risk information, the autonomy prime tasks elicited greater autonomous motivation, more positive attitudes and greater intentions to drink in moderation than did the neutral prime task. Study 3 (N?=?130) found that for high-risk participants who read risk information, autonomy prime participants reported less subsequent alcohol consumption than did neutral prime participants. The results are discussed in terms of the benefits of autonomy for adaptive responses to risk information.     

A developmental study of the auditory Stroop effect

A pediatric auditory version of the Stroop procedure was developed and administered to 48 normal children from 3 to 6 years of age. Our purpose was to define the developmental course characterizing interaction between auditory and semantic speech dimensions in young children. The procedure was a reaction time (RT) task that required children to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible to words spoken by a male or a female voice. Children were instructed to ignore what was said and to push the "Mommy" button if Mommy was talking or the "Daddy" button if Daddy was talking. Performance was obtained for words with neutral, congruent, and conflicting semantic content. Preschool children manifested processing dependencies that were similar to those observed in adults on the visual Stroop procedure. Conflict between semantic and auditory dimensions significantly increased RT and congruence between the two dimensions significantly decreased RT relative to the neutral condition. The pattern of results indicated that the meaning of words was processed automatically in the normal children. The magnitude of the Stroop effect reflected developmental change with increasing age.     

Effects of background music on phonological short-term memory

Immediate memory for visually presented verbal material is disrupted by concurrent speech, even when the speech is unattended and in a foreign language. Unattended noise does not produce a reliable decrement. These results have been interpreted in terms of a phonological short-term store that excludes non-speechlike sounds. The characteristics of this exclusion process were explored by studying the effects of music on the serial recall of sequences of nine digits presented visually. Experiment 1 compared the effects of unattended vocal or instrumental music with quiet and showed that both types of music disrupted STM performance, with vocal music being more disruptive than instrumental music. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate this result using more highly trained subjects. Vocal music caused significantly more disruption than instrumental music, which was not significantly worse than the silent control condition. Experiment 3 compared instrumental music with unattended speech and with noise modulated in amplitude, the degree of modulation being the same as in speech. The results showed that the noise condition did not differ from silence; both of these proved less disruptive than instrumental music, which was in turn less disruptive than the unattended speech condition. Theoretical interpretation of these results and their potential practical implications for the disruption of cognitive performance by background music are discussed.