Methodological Stimulus Considerations for Auditory Emotion Recognition Test Design.

Purpose: Many studies have investigated test design influences (e.g., number of stimuli, open- vs. closed-set tasks) on word recognition ability, but the impact that stimuli selection has on auditory emotion recognition has not been explored. This study assessed the impact of some stimulus parameters and test design methodologies on emotion recognition performance to optimize stimuli to use for auditory emotion recognition testing.

Method: Twenty-five young adult participants with normal or near-normal hearing completed four tasks evaluating methodological parameters that may affect emotion recognition performance. The four conditions assessed (a) word stimuli versus sentence stimuli, (b) the total number of stimuli and number of stimuli per emotion category, (c) the number of talkers, and (d) the number of emotion categories.

Results: Sentence stimuli yielded higher emotion recognition performance and increased performance variability compared to word stimuli. Recognition performance was independent of the number of stimuli per category, the number of talkers, and the number of emotion categories. Task duration expectedly increased with the total number of stimuli. A test of auditory emotion recognition that combined these design methodologies yielded high performance with low variability for listeners with normal hearing.

Conclusions: Stimulus selection influences performance and test reliability for auditory emotion recognition. Researchers should consider these influences when designing future tests of auditory emotion recognition to ensure tests are able to accomplish the study's aims.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28270943.