Nagels Leanne, Gaudrain Etienne, Vickers Deborah, Matos Lopes Marta, Hendriks Petra, Başkent Deniz
Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
PeerJ. 2020 Apr 2;8:e8773. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8773. eCollection 2020.
Traditionally, emotion recognition research has primarily used pictures and videos, while audio test materials are not always readily available or are not of good quality, which may be particularly important for studies with hearing-impaired listeners. Here we present a vocal emotion recognition test with pseudospeech productions from multiple speakers expressing three core emotions (happy, angry, and sad): the EmoHI test. The high sound quality recordings make the test suitable for use with populations of children and adults with normal or impaired hearing. Here we present normative data for vocal emotion recognition development in normal-hearing (NH) school-age children using the EmoHI test. Furthermore, we investigated cross-language effects by testing NH Dutch and English children, and the suitability of the EmoHI test for hearing-impaired populations, specifically for prelingually deaf Dutch children with cochlear implants (CIs). Our results show that NH children's performance improved significantly with age from the youngest age group onwards (4-6 years: 48.9%, on average). However, NH children's performance did not reach adult-like values (adults: 94.1%) even for the oldest age group tested (10-12 years: 81.1%). Additionally, the effect of age on NH children's development did not differ across languages. All except one CI child performed at or above chance-level showing the suitability of the EmoHI test. In addition, seven out of 14 CI children performed within the NH age-appropriate range, and nine out of 14 CI children did so when performance was adjusted for hearing age, measured from their age at CI implantation. However, CI children showed great variability in their performance, ranging from ceiling (97.2%) to below chance-level performance (27.8%), which could not be explained by chronological age alone. The strong and consistent development in performance with age, the lack of significant differences across the tested languages for NH children, and the above-chance performance of most CI children affirm the usability and versatility of the EmoHI test.
传统上，情绪识别研究主要使用图片和视频，而音频测试材料并不总是容易获得或质量不佳，这对于听力受损听众的研究可能尤为重要。在此，我们展示了一项使用多名说话者的伪语音表达三种核心情绪（快乐、愤怒和悲伤）的语音情绪识别测试：EmoHI测试。高质量的录音使该测试适用于听力正常或受损的儿童和成人。在此，我们展示了使用EmoHI测试对听力正常（NH）学龄儿童进行语音情绪识别发展的规范数据。此外，我们通过测试荷兰语和英语的NH儿童来研究跨语言效应，以及EmoHI测试对听力受损人群的适用性，特别是对语前聋的荷兰人工耳蜗植入（CI）儿童。我们的结果表明，从最年幼的年龄组（4 - 6岁：平均48.9%）开始，NH儿童的表现随年龄显著提高。然而，即使是测试的最年长年龄组（10 - 12岁：81.1%），NH儿童的表现也未达到成人水平（成人：94.1%）。此外，年龄对NH儿童发展的影响在不同语言之间没有差异。除了一名CI儿童外，所有儿童的表现都达到或高于随机水平，表明EmoHI测试具有适用性。此外，14名CI儿童中有7名的表现处于NH儿童年龄适宜范围内，14名CI儿童中有9名在根据植入人工耳蜗时的年龄测量的听力年龄进行表现调整后达到该范围。然而，CI儿童的表现差异很大，从满分（97.2%）到低于随机水平的表现（27.8%），这不能仅由实际年龄来解释。随着年龄增长表现出的强劲且一致的发展、NH儿童在测试语言之间缺乏显著差异以及大多数CI儿童高于随机水平的表现，都证实了EmoHI测试的可用性和通用性。
