Emphasis in Speech: The Individual’s Perspective

Thikra Mohammad, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in English Linguistics and minor in Speech Language Pathology

My independent study research class has been one of the most beneficial and challenging courses I have ever taken in my college career. The research stood out with a lot of practical tools and concepts I learned over the past year. I worked on a group project all semester with other college students, trying our absolute best to gather data, with our English Linguistics professor alongside us helping us every step of the way.

When this research first began, I didn't know what to expect. I had never taken an independent study before, and I worked with a professor on researching empathy and how it intertwines with our ability to perceive and comprehend the emotions conveyed through speech.

It was so interesting to investigate how our tendency to hear or distinguish between how people emphasize words during speech may be related to particular character traits. As time passed and we reached our maximum number of participants to volunteer to take the study in our research lab, it was a surreal feeling. I remember telling my parents how it was a very different feeling than completing most of my classes after finalizing the research. It was a feeling like no other, knowing that you worked so hard, trying to find participants that fit the criteria of only native English-speaking individuals and having a total of 100 volunteers. I had accomplished something I never saw myself doing the last 3 years or even back when I was in high school.

This research was so cool to see the intriguing relationship between empathy and speech perception, but it mainly focused on how individual differences in perspective-taking abilities shape the sensitivity to vocal emphasis. It took a lot of time and effort to make this research successful and possible for all of us to present at the undergraduate conference.

The purpose of this capstone was to show compelling insights into the interplay between empathy and speech perception. The positive correlation observed between perspective-taking abilities and sensitivity to vocal emphasis underscores the pivotal role of empathy in facilitating accurate interpretation of what are called prosodic cues.

In the present study, we tested for a relationship between empathy; an aspect of personality, and cognitive processing style and emphasis. We found that individual differences in empathy were predictive in the perception of emphasis. It was estimated using measures of emotion recognition, and emphasis was operationalized as the height of pitch levels on words, in what is known as Words with Sentenced Stress. This shows that empathy may be an important source of individual differences in perceiving and understanding spoken language.

This research project was a major turning point in my undergraduate experience and was both demanding and enlightening. Working with classmates and a dedicated professor brought richness to the experience, and as a capstone course, it offered an environment for putting learned principles into practice. Investigating the relationship between speech perception and empathy provided exciting new insights into the dynamics of human communication. The results of participant recruitment, study design, and data analysis demonstrated how important empathy is in influencing how we interpret spoken language. This study reflects my progress and perseverance during my time in college and adds to the academic conversation as well as being a personal accomplishment.