The vocal side of empathy: neural correlates of pain perception in spoken complaints.

In the extensive neuroimaging literature on empathy for pain, few studies have investigated how this phenomenon may relate to everyday social situations such as spoken interactions. The present study used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to assess how complaints, as vocal expressions of pain, are empathically processed by listeners and how these empathic responses may vary based on speakers' vocal expression and cultural identity. Twenty-four French participants listened to short utterances describing a painful event, which were either produced in a neutral-sounding or complaining voice by both in-group (French) and out-group (French Canadian) speakers. Results suggest that the perception of suffering from a complaining voice increased activity in the emotional voice areas, composed of voice-sensitive temporal regions interacting with prefrontal cortices and the amygdala. The Salience and Theory of Mind networks, associated with affective and cognitive aspects of empathy, also showed prosody-related activity and specifically correlated with behavioral evaluations of suffering by listeners. Complaints produced by in- vs out-group speakers elicited sensorimotor and default mode activity, respectively, suggesting accent-based changes in empathic perspective. These results, while reaffirming the role of key networks in tasks involving empathy, highlight the importance of vocal expression information and social categorization processes when perceiving another's suffering during social interactions.

Complain like you mean it! How prosody conveys suffering even about innocuous events.

When complaining, speakers can use their voice to convey a feeling of pain, even when describing innocuous events. Rapid detection of emotive and identity features of the voice may constrain how the semantic content of complaints is processed, as indexed by N400 and P600 effects evoked by the final, pain-related word. Twenty-six participants listened to statements describing painful and innocuous events expressed in a neutral or complaining voice, produced by ingroup and outgroup accented speakers. Participants evaluated how hurt the speaker felt under EEG monitoring. Principal Component Analysis of Event-Related Potentials from the final word onset demonstrated N400 and P600 increases when complainers described innocuous vs. painful events in a neutral voice, but these effects were altered when utterances were expressed in a complaining voice. Independent of prosody, N400 amplitudes increased for complaints spoken in outgroup vs. ingroup accents. Results demonstrate that prosody and accent constrain the processing of spoken complaints as proposed in a parallel-constraint-satisfaction model.

Disentangling emotional signals in the brain: an ALE meta-analysis of vocal affect perception.

Recent advances in neuroimaging research on vocal emotion perception have revealed voice-sensitive areas specialized in processing affect. Experimental data on this subject is varied, investigating a wide range of emotions through different vocal signals and task demands. The present meta-analysis was designed to disentangle this diversity of results by summarizing neuroimaging data in the vocal emotion perception literature. Data from 44 experiments contrasting emotional and neutral voices was analyzed to assess brain areas involved in vocal affect perception in general, as well as depending on the type of voice signal (speech prosody or vocalizations), the task demands (implicit or explicit attention to emotions), and the specific emotion perceived. Results reassessed a consistent bilateral network of Emotional Voices Areas consisting of the superior temporal cortex and primary auditory regions. Specific activations and lateralization of these regions, as well as additional areas (insula, middle temporal gyrus) were further modulated by signal type and task demands. Exploring the sparser data on single emotions also suggested the recruitment of other regions (insula, inferior frontal gyrus, frontal operculum) for specific aspects of each emotion. These novel meta-analytic results suggest that while the bulk of vocal affect processing is localized in the STC, the complexity and variety of such vocal signals entails functional specificities in complex and varied cortical (and potentially subcortical) response pathways.

Listen to my feelings! How prosody and accent drive the empathic relevance of complaining speech.

Interpersonal communication often involves sharing our feelings with others; complaining, for example, aims to elicit empathy in listeners by vocally expressing a speaker's suffering. Despite the growing neuroscientific interest in the phenomenon of empathy, few have investigated how it is elicited in real time by vocal signals (prosody), and how this might be affected by interpersonal factors, such as a speaker's cultural background (based on their accent). To investigate the neural processes at play when hearing spoken complaints, twenty-six French participants listened to complaining and neutral utterances produced by in-group French and out-group Québécois (i.e., French-Canadian) speakers. Participants rated how hurt the speaker felt while their cerebral activity was monitored with electroencephalography (EEG). Principal Component Analysis of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) taken at utterance onset showed culture-dependent time courses of emotive prosody processing. The high motivational relevance of ingroup complaints increased the P200 response compared to all other utterance types; in contrast, outgroup complaints selectively elicited an early posterior negativity in the same time window, followed by an increased N400 (due to ongoing effort to derive affective meaning from outgroup voices). Ingroup neutral utterances evoked a late negativity which may reflect re-analysis of emotively less salient, but culturally relevant ingroup speech. Results highlight the time-course of neurocognitive responses that contribute to emotive speech processing for complaints, establishing the critical role of prosody as well as social-relational factors (i.e., cultural identity) on how listeners are likely to "empathize" with a speaker.

Cortical processing of speaker politeness: Tracking the dynamic effects of voice tone and politeness markers.

Information in the tone of voice alters social impressions and underlying brain activity as listeners evaluate the interpersonal relevance of utterances. Here, we presented requests that expressed politeness distinctions through the voice (polite/rude) and explicit linguistic markers (half of the requests began with Please). Thirty participants performed a social perception task (rating friendliness) while their electroencephalogram was recorded. Behaviorally, vocal politeness strategies had a much stronger influence on the perceived friendliness than the linguistic marker. Event-related potentials revealed rapid effects of (im)polite voices on cortical activity prior to ~300 ms; P200 amplitudes increased for polite versus rude voices, suggesting that the speaker's polite stance was registered as more salient in our task. At later stages, politeness distinctions encoded by the speaker's voice and their use of Please interacted, modulating activity in the N400 (300-500 ms) and late positivity (600-800 ms) time windows. Patterns of results suggest that initial attention deployment to politeness cues is rapidly influenced by the motivational significance of a speaker's voice. At later stages, processes for integrating vocal and lexical information resulted in increased cognitive effort to reevaluate utterances with ambiguous/contradictory cues. The potential influence of social anxiety on the P200 effect is also discussed.

Immediate online use of prosody reveals the ironic intentions of a speaker: neurophysiological evidence.

In social interactions, speakers often use their tone of voice ("prosody") to communicate their interpersonal stance to pragmatically mark an ironic intention (e.g., sarcasm). The neurocognitive effects of prosody as listeners process ironic statements in real time are still poorly understood. In this study, 30 participants judged the friendliness of literal and ironic criticisms and compliments in the absence of context while their electrical brain activity was recorded. Event-related potentials reflecting the uptake of prosodic information were tracked at two time points in the utterance. Prosody robustly modulated P200 and late positivity amplitudes from utterance onset. These early neural responses registered both the speaker's stance (positive/negative) and their intention (literal/ironic). At a later timepoint (You are such a great/horrible cook), P200, N400, and P600 amplitudes were all greater when the critical word valence was congruent with the speaker's vocal stance, suggesting that irony was contextually facilitated by early effects from prosody. Our results exemplify that rapid uptake of salient prosodic features allows listeners to make online predictions about the speaker's ironic intent. This process can constrain their representation of an utterance to uncover nonliteral meanings without violating contextual expectations held about the speaker, as described by parallel-constraint satisfaction models.

Emotivity in the Voice: Prosodic, Lexical, and Cultural Appraisal of Complaining Speech.

Emotive speech is a social act in which a speaker displays emotional signals with a specific intention; in the case of third-party complaints, this intention is to elicit empathy in the listener. The present study assessed how the emotivity of complaints was perceived in various conditions. Participants listened to short statements describing painful or neutral situations, spoken with a complaining or neutral prosody, and evaluated how complaining the speaker sounded. In addition to manipulating features of the message, social-affiliative factors which could influence complaint perception were varied by adopting a cross-cultural design: participants were either Québécois (French Canadian) or French and listened to utterances expressed by both cultural groups. The presence of a complaining tone of voice had the largest effect on participant evaluations, while the nature of statements had a significant, but smaller influence. Marginal effects of culture on explicit evaluation of complaints were found. A multiple mediation analysis suggested that mean fundamental frequency was the main prosodic signal that participants relied on to detect complaints, though most of the prosody effect could not be linearly explained by acoustic parameters. These results highlight a tacit agreement between speaker and listener: what characterizes a complaint is how it is said (i.e., the tone of voice), more than what it is about or who produces it. More generally, the study emphasizes the central importance of prosody in expressive speech acts such as complaints, which are designed to strengthen social bonds and supportive responses in interactive behavior. This intentional and interpersonal aspect in the communication of emotions needs to be further considered in research on affect and communication.