Nele Hellbernd | Comprehension of communicative intentions via prosody

Action-theoretic views of language posit that the recognition of others’ intentions is key to successful interpersonal communication. Yet, speakers do not always code their intentions literally. The present talk will present evidence that speech prosody—the tone of voice—can serve the socially relevant function to communicate the speaker's intent beyond the meaning of words. In a set of acoustical, behavioral, and neural measurements, I will show that (i) Single (non-)words expressed with different intentions (e.g., criticism, doubt, or suggestion) exhibit characteristic acoustic-prosodic profiles. (ii) Perceptually, participants were well able to associate the prosodic profiles with the underlying intentions. (iii) Neurally, decoding of clear (vs. ambiguous) intentional prosodies recruited interacting auditory, social, and emotional networks while ambiguous prosodies activated stimulus-related, decision making processes. In conclusion, we propose that multiple auditory-prosodic and socio-cognitive mechanisms and their flexible weighting depending on listening situation may provide a robust basis for successful communication beyond the literal meaning.