The Contribution of Sound Intensity in Vocal Emotion Perception: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

Although its role is frequently stressed in acoustic profile for vocal emotion, sound intensity is frequently regarded as a control parameter in neurocognitive studies of vocal emotion, leaving its role and neural underpinnings unclear. To investigate these issues, we asked participants to rate the angry level of neutral and angry prosodies before and after sound intensity modification in Experiment 1, and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) for mismatching emotional prosodies with and without sound intensity modification and for matching emotional prosodies while participants performed emotional feature or sound intensity congruity judgment in Experiment 2. It was found that sound intensity modification had significant effect on the rating of angry level for angry prosodies, but not for neutral ones. Moreover, mismatching emotional prosodies, relative to matching ones, induced enhanced N2/P3 complex and theta band synchronization irrespective of sound intensity modification and task demands. However, mismatching emotional prosodies with reduced sound intensity showed prolonged peak latency and decreased amplitude in N2/P3 complex and smaller theta band synchronization. These findings suggest that though it cannot categorically affect emotionality conveyed in emotional prosodies, sound intensity contributes to emotional significance quantitatively, implying that sound intensity should not simply be taken as a control parameter and its unique role needs to be specified in vocal emotion studies.