EmoLexPros: A database of prosodically incongruent emotional words in European Portuguese

In this study, we validated a set of audio stimuli addressing emotional lexico-prosodic congruence. Positive, neutral and negative words classified as such in European Portuguese lexical databases were recorded with matching and mismatching emotional prosodic patterns (positive, neutral and negative). The produced set was submitted to behavioral validation, where each utterance was rated for lexico-prosodic match. Word pairs showing maximal differences across match and mismatch versions were selected (n=55) and subjected to prosody-related acoustic validation. The three types of prosodic patterns, positive, negative and neutral, differenced in F0, amplitude, duration and timbral parameters. Finally, items were catalogued for their psycholinguistic properties. The present validated set may be used for emotional prosody research in European Portuguese. Since it is compatible with passive listening tasks, it is particularly relevant to research and clinical practice engaging populations who are limited in their ability to provide explicit responses.