Recently, research has shown that people produce inner speech â a mental simulation of overt speech â in silent reading of, especially, direct speech quotations. Among those studies, some have reported neural overlaps (activations of the right temporal voice areas) between inner speech and emotional prosody, suggesting that inner speech may have emotional consequences. This project explores this possibility by assessing individualsâ performance on emotional judgements during silent reading. Participants were asked to judge categories of emotions (to choose one out of six facial expressions or six emotion words) for the reported speakers in the first experiments, while the latter three experiments indicated readers to judge the intensity of emotions by giving emotional arousal ratings. The results demonstrated that readers were faster to make emotional judgements when reading quotations in direct speech than in indirect speech. This âquantitativeâ effect supports the hypothesis that hearing inner speech in direct speech conditions helps readers to access the reported speakersâ emotional states. However, the findings of the âqualitativeâ effects captured by making more appropriate emotional judgements were mixed, suggesting the effects may be more complex than increasing the intensity of emotional activations. Several limitations, such as the experimental setup, were discussed. Future studies are suggested to confirm that the advantage of response time in direct speech conditions is due to inner speech and explore the âqualitativeâ effects on emotional judgements of hearing it.
Date of Award | 1 Aug 2022 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | - The University of Manchester
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Supervisor | Bo Yao (Supervisor) & Jason Taylor (Supervisor) |
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The emotional consequences of hearing inner speech during silent reading of direct speech quotations
Lin, H. (Author). 1 Aug 2022
Student thesis: Master of Philosophy