Talker Differences in Clear and Conversational Speech: Perceived Emotional Valence

Clear speech, a speaking style talkers adopt when talking to individuals with hearing loss, is often described as sounding “angry” (e.g., “I try to speak clearly, but when I do, he thinks I'm mad at him”). Previous research has indicated that listeners do indeed rate clear speech as “angry” or “disgusted” more often than conversational speech. However, this same research found that some talkers can increase the clarity of their speech without sounding angry. The present study expands the previous work by testing perceived emotion for 41 talkers in order to examine talker differences in the perceived emotional valence of clear and conversational speech. Perceptual ratings from 25 young adults with normal hearing will be gathered using an online experiment interface. Stimuli consist of 14 emotionally neutral sentences in both clear and conversational speaking styles from 41 talkers. Listeners will be asked to “judge the emotion you think you heard in that sentence” using a six-alternative, forced-choice paradigm for thefollowing emotional categories: “anger,” “fear,” “disgust,” “sadness,” “happiness,” and “neutral.” It is anticipated that the current study will increase our understanding of how perceived emotional valence in clear and conversational speaking styles varies among talkers.