Minatoya Maiko, Daikoku Tatsuya, Kuniyoshi Yasuo
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jul 8;16:1599430. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1599430. eCollection 2025.
Emotional responses to auditory stimuli are a common part of everyday life. However, for some individuals, these auditory-induced emotions can become distressing enough to interfere with daily functioning. Despite the prevalence of these experiences, the mechanisms underlying auditory-induced emotional responses remain only partially understood. Previous research has identified several contributing factors, including features of the auditory stimuli, listener traits, and bodily sensations triggered by the stimuli. However, prior studies have primarily focused on the acoustic features of auditory stimuli, leaving the role of syntactic features largely unexplored. This study focuses specifically on hierarchical syntactic structures, examining how they influence emotional experiences in conjunction with listener traits and bodily sensations. We conducted an online experiment in which 715 participants listened to 26 sound sequences, each of which systematically varied in hierarchical syntactic structure. The sequences were generated by combining three types of local pitch movement with three types of global pitch movement, each presented in ascending and descending pitch directions, resulting in nine levels of combined complexity. Participants rated the emotional valence and arousal of each sequence and indicated any bodily sensations they experienced using a bodily map. Measures of sensory processing patterns were also collected. Results showed that emotional valence was associated with the complex interplay of moderate syntactic complexity ("not too simple, not too complex"), sensory sensitivity, and upper torso sensations. These findings contribute to existing research by identifying syntactic features that shape auditory-induced emotional experiences and by demonstrating the association between bodily sensations and emotional experience.
对听觉刺激的情绪反应是日常生活中常见的一部分。然而，对一些人来说，这些由听觉引发的情绪可能会变得令人痛苦，足以干扰日常功能。尽管这些经历很普遍，但听觉引发的情绪反应背后的机制仍只被部分理解。先前的研究已经确定了几个促成因素，包括听觉刺激的特征、听众特征以及由刺激引发的身体感觉。然而，先前的研究主要集中在听觉刺激的声学特征上，句法特征的作用在很大程度上尚未得到探索。本研究特别关注层次句法结构，研究它们如何与听众特征和身体感觉一起影响情绪体验。我们进行了一项在线实验，715名参与者收听了26个声音序列，每个序列在层次句法结构上都有系统的变化。这些序列是通过将三种类型的局部音高变化与三种类型的全局音高变化相结合而生成的，每种变化都以升调和降调方向呈现，从而产生了九个层次的组合复杂性。参与者对每个序列的情绪效价和唤醒程度进行评分，并使用身体地图指出他们所经历的任何身体感觉。我们还收集了感觉处理模式的测量数据。结果表明，情绪效价与适度句法复杂性（“不太简单，也不太复杂”）、感觉敏感性和上半身感觉的复杂相互作用有关。这些发现通过识别塑造听觉引发的情绪体验的句法特征以及通过证明身体感觉与情绪体验之间的关联，为现有研究做出了贡献。
