Objective And Non-Neutral Literal Phrases In Children

Fifteen short phrases derived from 12 different books written for children were used to retrieve 5 happy, 5 neutral, and 5 sad literal phrases. A female voice read each phrase monotonously. A Yeti USB microphone was used to record the stimuli.
In the pre-test phase, phrase stimuli included recordings of monotonous happy literal phrases, monotonous neutral literal phrases, and monotonous sad literal phrases. Prosody stimuli included each of the 15 literal phrases expressed with both happy and sad intonation. Background music stimuli included happy instrumental music, neutral instrumental music and sad instrumental music.
Throughout the pre-test phase, a group of 10 adults heard recordings of monotonous phrases, phrases with prosody, and excerpts
For example, a “happy” stimulus would have a mean rating by adult listeners of near 5, whereas a “sad stimulus” would have a rating near 1. Stimuli werecongruent, incongruent, or neutral. Congruent stimuli included phrases in which the literal meaning matched the vocal prosody or music. The congruent stimuli were pairings of happy literal phrase and happy voice, happy literal phrase and happy music, sad literal phrase and sad voice, and sad literal phrase and sad music.Incongruent stimuli included phrases in which the literal meaning was mismatched with the vocal prosody or music. The incongruent stimuli were pairings of sad literal phrase and happy voice, sad literal phrase and happy music, happy literal phrase and sad voice, and happy literal phrase and sad music.Neutral phrases were phrases in which the literal meaning was neutral as rated by adults in the pre-test phase. Neutral stimuli were neutral phrases matched with neutral prosody or neutral music. The music recordings were controlled for percussion, as sad music typically contains less percussion than happy music, which may have had an impact on ratings. Children rated the recordings by colouring the faces on a 5-point happy face scale, which was consisted of five faces (frowning, neutral, and smiling) along a continuous
Before the testing began, participants were asked to point to the sad face and the happy face to ensure that the child understood how to use the scale accurately. In a quasi-random order, children listened to recordings of the congruent, incongruent, and neutral stimuli. A total of 6 monotonousliteral phrases (2 happy, 2 neutral, 2 sad), 6 excerpts of music (2 happy, 2 neutral, 2 sad), 4 congruent phrases with prosody (2 happy, 2 sad), 4 incongruent phrases with prosody (2 happy, 2 sad), 6 congruent phrases with music (2 happy, 2 neutral, 2 sad), and 4 incongruent phrases with music (2 happy, 2 sad) were played for the children aged four-years-old and greater. Three-year-old children listened to 3 monotonousliteral phrases (1 happy, 1 neutral, 1 sad), 3 excerpts of music (1 happy, 1 neutral, 1 sad), 2 congruent phrases with prosody (2 happy, 2 sad), 2 incongruent phrases with prosody (1 happy, 1 sad), 5 congruent phrases with music (2 happy, 1 neutral, 2 sad), and 4 incongruent phrases with music (2 happy, 2