Opposing serial dependencies revealed for sequences of auditory emotional stimuli

E. Van der Burg*, M. Baart, J. Vroomen, H. Zhang, D. Alais

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

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Abstract

Our percept of the world is not solely determined by what we perceive and process at a given moment in time, but also depends on what we processed recently. In the present study, we investigate whether the perceived emotion of a spoken sentence is contingent upon the emotion of an auditory stimulus on the preceding trial (i.e., serial dependence). Thereto, participants were exposed to spoken sentences that varied in emotional affect by changing the prosody that ranged from ‘happy’ to ‘fearful’. Participants were instructed to rate the emotion. We found a positive serial dependence for emotion processing whereby the perceived emotion was biased towards the emotion on the preceding trial. When we introduced ‘no-go’ trials (i.e., no rating was required), we found a negative serial dependence when participants knew in advance to withhold their response on a given trial (Experiment 2), and a positive serial dependence when participants received the information to withhold their response after the stimulus presentation (Experiment 3). We therefore established a robust serial dependence for emotion processing in speech and introduce a methodology to disentangle perceptual from post-perceptual processes. This approach can be applied to the vast majority of studies investigating sequential dependencies to separate positive from negative serial dependence.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)317-334
Number of pages18
JournalPerception
Volume53
Issue number5-6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Keywords

  • audition
  • emotions in speech
  • go–no-go task
  • response bias
  • serial dependencies

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