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The idea that speech processing relies on unique, encapsulated, domain-specific mechanisms has been around for some time. Another well-known idea, often espoused as being in opposition to the first proposal, is that processing of speech sounds entails general-purpose neural mechanisms sensitive to the acoustic features that are present in speech. Here, we suggest that these dichotomous views need not be mutually exclusive. Specifically, there is now extensive evidence that spectral and temporal acoustical properties predict the relative specialization of right and left auditory cortices, and that this is a parsimonious way to account not only for the processing of speech sounds, but also for non-speech sounds such as musical tones. We also point out that there is equally compelling evidence that neural responses elicited by speech sounds can differ depending on more abstract, linguistically relevant properties of a stimulus (such as whether it forms part of one's language or not). Tonal languages provide a particularly valuable window to understand the interplay between these processes. The key to reconciling these phenomena probably lies in understanding the interactions between afferent pathways that carry stimulus information, with top-down processing mechanisms that modulate these processes. Although we are still far from the point of having a complete picture, we argue that moving forward will require us to abandon the dichotomy argument in favour of a more integrated approach.

The auditory environment typically contains several sound sources that overlap in time, and the auditory system parses the complex sound wave into streams or voices that represent the various sound sources. Music is also often polyphonic. Interestingly, the main melody (spectral/pitch information) is most often carried by the highest-pitched voice, and the rhythm (temporal foundation) is most often laid down by the lowest-pitched voice. Previous work using electroencephalography (EEG) demonstrated that the auditory cortex encodes pitch more robustly in the higher of two simultaneous tones or melodies, and modeling work indicated that this high-voice superiority for pitch originates in the sensory periphery. Here, we investigated the neural basis of carrying rhythmic timing information in lower-pitched voices. We presented simultaneous high-pitched and low-pitched tones in an isochronous stream and occasionally presented either the higher or the lower tone 50 ms earlier than expected, while leaving the other tone at the expected time. EEG recordings revealed that mismatch negativity responses were larger for timing deviants of the lower tones, indicating better timing encoding for lower-pitched compared with higher-pitch tones at the level of auditory cortex. A behavioral motor task revealed that tapping synchronization was more influenced by the lower-pitched stream. Results from a biologically plausible model of the auditory periphery suggest that nonlinear cochlear dynamics contribute to the observed effect. The low-voice superiority effect for encoding timing explains the widespread musical practice of carrying rhythm in bass-ranged instruments and complements previously established high-voice superiority effects for pitch and melody.

Effective interprofessional communication, including politeness, respect for coworkers, and self-control, is crucial in emergency care. These values are emphasized by both Thai and US cultures. Notably, nurses place greater significance on respect and self-control than physicians, underscoring the need for physicians to recognize and adopt these attributes, especially in interactions with nursing staff. To develop these competencies, interprofessional education (IPE) programs are essential, with simulation-based IPE, particularly virtual simulations, showing promise in enhancing teamwork and communication. However, research on the tone of voice in emergency communication is limited, especially in Thailand, where standardized IPE curricula are lacking. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of Team and Strategies to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) virtual simulation IPE, using a 3D computer-based or virtual reality (VR) approach, in enhancing interprofessional communication among health care students, focusing on politeness and assertiveness in the tone of voice. An experimental design was used with 30 health care students from 5 disciplines, including medical, nursing, medical technology, radiological technology, and pharmacy students. Participants were recorded during pretraining and posttraining TeamSTEPPS sessions. Acoustic analysis focused on 3 cues: duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency (F0). Duration measured the length of utterances, whereas intensity (loudness) and F0 (pitch) were analyzed using parameters, such as maximum, minimum, mean, SD, and range. In total, 5663 utterances were analyzed, providing a dataset for identifying significant shifts in vocal delivery after training. Using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, these 11 acoustic parameters were extracted and statistically analyzed to compare pre- and posttraining differences. Significant improvements in the tone of voice were observed. Medical and nursing students exhibited changes in pitch (SD and mean of F0; P<.001) and loudness (mean of intensity, P<.001), suggesting more attentive communication. The increased utterance duration in core team members suggests that they engaged in more elaborate information sharing and verification, critical for patient safety. Medical technology and radiological technology students showed reduced pitch (mean of F0; P<.05 in medical technology students and P<.01 in radiological students) and intensity (mean of intensity; P<.01 in medical technology students), reflecting calmer, more controlled communication. Pharmacy students showed minor changes. TeamSTEPPS virtual simulation IPE, using a 3D computer-based or VR approach, effectively enhances interprofessional nonverbal communication by improving key acoustic features related to politeness and assertiveness within the Thai culture context. Medical and nursing students showed the most notable gains, whereas quieter more controlled communication styles emerged among the other groups. The results demonstrate the ways in which vocal modulations can reflect role-specific responsibilities and interpersonal sensitivity in clinical interactions. These findings highlight the significance of tailored virtual simulation IPE programs for improving teamwork and patient outcomes across health care disciplines.

Here, we conducted the first study to explore how motivations expressed through speech are processed in real-time. Participants listened to sentences spoken in two types of well-studied motivational tones (autonomy-supportive and controlling), or a neutral tone of voice. To examine this, listeners were presented with sentences that either signaled motivations through prosody (tone of voice) and words simultaneously (e.g. ‘You absolutely have to do it my way’ spoken in a controlling tone of voice), or lacked motivationally biasing words (e.g. ‘Why don’t we meet again tomorrow’ spoken in a motivational tone of voice). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to motivations conveyed through words and prosody showed that listeners rapidly distinguished between motivations and neutral forms of communication as shown in enhanced P2 amplitudes in response to motivational when compared with neutral speech. This early detection mechanism is argued to help determine the importance of incoming information. Once assessed, motivational language is continuously monitored and thoroughly evaluated. When compared with neutral speech, listening to controlling (but not autonomy-supportive) speech led to enhanced late potential ERP mean amplitudes, suggesting that listeners are particularly attuned to controlling messages. The importance of controlling motivation for listeners is mirrored in effects observed for motivations expressed through prosody only. Here, an early rapid appraisal, as reflected in enhanced P2 amplitudes, is only found for sentences spoken in controlling (but not autonomy-supportive) prosody. Once identified as sounding pressuring, the message seems to be preferentially processed, as shown by enhanced late potential amplitudes in response to controlling prosody. Taken together, results suggest that motivational and neutral language are differentially processed; further, the data suggest that listening to cues signaling pressure and control cannot be ignored and lead to preferential, and more in-depth processing mechanisms.

To avoid misunderstandings, ironic speakers may accompany their ironic remarks with a particular intonation and specific facial expressions that signal that the message should not be taken at face value. The acoustic realization of the ironic tone of voice differs from language to language, whereas the ironic face manifests the speaker’s negative stance and might thus have a universal basis. We conducted a study on 574 participants speaking 6 different languages (French, German, Dutch, English, Mandarin, and Italian—the control group) to verify whether they could recognize ironic remarks uttered in Italian in three different modalities: watching muted videos, listening to audio tracks, and when both cues were present. We found that speakers of other languages could overall recognize irony uttered in Italian when all the markers were present, and they relied mostly on visual cues: In all these language groups, accuracy in the audio-only modality was always lower than accuracy in the video-only modality, although this trend was significant only for Chinese and Dutch participants. Moreover, the rate of recognition in the audio-visual modality was always significantly higher compared to the audio-only, while the difference between the audio-visual and the video-only modality was significant only for the English group. Overall, these results speak in favor of the hypothesis of a common basis for the visual expression of irony, whereas the acoustic markers alone do not constitute a reliable cue for the cross-linguistic recognition of irony.

The correlations between interpopulation genetic and linguistic diversities are mostly noncausal (spurious), being due to historical processes and geographical factors that shape them in similar ways. Studies of such correlations usually consider allele frequencies and linguistic groupings (dialects, languages, linguistic families or phyla), sometimes controlling for geographic, topographic, or ecological factors. Here, we consider the relation between allele frequencies and linguistic typological features. Specifically, we focus on the derived haplogroups of the brain growth and development-related genes ASPM and Microcephalin, which show signs of natural selection and a marked geographic structure, and on linguistic tone, the use of voice pitch to convey lexical or grammatical distinctions. We hypothesize that there is a relationship between the population frequency of these two alleles and the presence of linguistic tone and test this hypothesis relative to a large database (983 alleles and 26 linguistic features in 49 populations), showing that it is not due to the usual explanatory factors represented by geography and history. The relationship between genetic and linguistic diversity in this case may be causal: certain alleles can bias language acquisition or processing and thereby influence the trajectory of language change through iterated cultural transmission.

The purpose of this study was to develop an effective health communication strategy to guide the decision-making process of parents considering getting their children HPV vaccines. Using inoculation theory and findings on tone of voice as theoretical frameworks, the present study conducted a 2 (message type: inoculation vs. supportive) × 2 (tone of voice: human voice vs. organizational voice) mixed experiment with a total of 231 U.S. parents (either mother or father of a child eligible for the HPV vaccine). The results revealed that HPV vaccination promotions based on the inoculation message were more likely to generate positive attitudes toward the vaccination, higher intention to vaccinate their children, and higher intention to spread positive word of mouth (WOM) about HPV vaccination. Also, HPV vaccination promotions in the human voice were likely to increase the WOM intention more than those in the organizational voice. In regard to an interaction effect, human voice turned out to be more effective than organizational voice to generate the WOM intention when it comes to supportive messages; inoculation-based messages were similarly effective across the human and the organizational voice condition.

Experiences of adversity in the early years of life alter the developing brain. However, evidence documenting this relationship often focuses on severe stressors and relies on peripheral measures of neurobiological functioning during infancy. In the present study, we employed functional MRI during natural sleep to examine associations between a more moderate environmental stressor (nonphysical interparental conflict) and 6- to 12-month-old infants' neural processing of emotional tone of voice. The primary question was whether interparental conflict experienced by infants is associated with neural responses to emotional tone of voice, particularly very angry speech. Results indicated that maternal report of higher interparental conflict was associated with infants' greater neural responses to very angry relative to neutral speech across several brain regions implicated in emotion and stress reactivity and regulation (including rostral anterior cingulate cortex, caudate, thalamus, and hypothalamus). These findings suggest that even moderate environmental stress may be associated with brain functioning during infancy.

The results of a production experiment show that English speakers distinguish elements under contrastive focus from elements that are merely new in the discourse. A novel paradigm eliciting both contrastively focused and merely discourse-new elements in the same sentence avoids differences in information structure and pitch accenting in the context surrounding the target elements that were confounds in previous studies on the topic. Elements under contrastive focus show greater duration, relative intensity, and F0 movement with respect to other elements in the utterance than elements that are new in the discourse but not under contrastive focus. We argue that the phonetic differences revealed here cannot be explained in terms of systematic manipulation of pitch-accent type or phrasal boundaries, and should instead be analyzed as differences in phraselevel phonological prominence for contrastively focused and merely discourse-new elements.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the boundary conditions of the effect of the valence of word-of-mouth on social networking sites (sWOM) on consumer responses (attitude toward the service provider, purchase intention and positive word-of-mouth intention). Specifically, the authors examine two moderators: the tone of voice (factual vs emotional) of the sWOM and service type (utilitarian vs hedonic) of the service that the sWOM is about. Design/methodology/approach A 2 (message valence: positive vs negative) × 2 (tone of voice: factual vs emotional) × 2 (service type: utilitarian vs hedonic) full-factorial between-subjects online experiment with 400 respondents was conducted and the data were analyzed using Hayes’ PROCESS macro. Findings The results show that message valence exerts a greater impact on consumer responses with factual sWOM messages compared to emotional ones. Furthermore, the impact of message valence is stronger for hedonic services compared to utilitarian services. In contrast to the authors’ expectations, there is no significant impact of matching the tone of voice to the service type. Practical implications First, for sWOM senders, factual messages are found to be more influential: backing an sWOM up with arguments and specific details increases the chance of it affecting consumers’ responses. As a result, marketers, especially of predominantly hedonic services, should encourage their followers and customers to spread positive factual sWOM about their service. Originality/value The study tests two previously unstudied moderating variables that affect the relationship between message valence and consumer responses to sWOM messages. Moreover, this study provides interesting insights for marketers and bloggers or reviewers.