Prosodic marking of playful teasing exchanges

1
Prosodic marking of playful teasing
exchanges Debra L. Burnett and Linda M. Milosky
Department of Communication Sciences and
Disorders, Syracuse University
Poster 1520 Board 196
Abstract The present study seeks to contrast
selected acoustic characteristics in mothers
utterances constituting playful mislabeling
teases with those that were sincere (i.e., not
teasing). Playful teasing was observed between 15
children, ages 18-33 months, and their mothers
and mislabel tease episodes were identified.
Acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency (f0)
were conducted using Praat. Overall analysis of
these acoustic measures as well as analysis of
the measures by sentence type (question vs.
assertion) are reported.
Results
Example of an assertion (While reading the book
Goodnight Moon) Mislabel tease Goodnight
sun. Sincere utterance Goodnight
moon. Example of a question Mislabel tease Is
that a bird? Sincere utterance Is that a
flower?

• Findings for Questions (see Figures 12)
• Each of the mothers demonstrated a tease in the
  form of a question (n15).
• Paired t-tests (a.05) were used to verify that
  the sentences were of equal length for both
  sentence types. Teases averaged 1.06 seconds and
  sincere utterances averaged 1.07 seconds (p.93).
  
• A paired t-test (a.05) of the mothers range f0
  was significant (p.005) indicating that mothers
  used a wider range during teases than during
  sincere utterances but mean f0 was not
  significantly different (p.13).

• Findings for Assertions (see Figures 12)
• 11/15 mothers demonstrated teases in the form of
  an assertion.
• Paired t-tests (a.05) were used to verify that
  the sentences were of equal length. Mislabel
  tease utterances averaged 1.37 seconds and
  sincere utterances sentences averaged 1.13
  seconds (p.25).
• Paired t-tests (a.05) of the mothers mean f0
  and range f0 during teasing and sincere
  utterances were not significant (p.88, p.74
  respectively).

Introduction

• Playful teasing is defined as exchanges in which
  the speaker intentionally provokes the target in
  a playful, nonthreatening way with the use of
  verbal and/or nonverbal off-record markers such
  as facial expression or use of a playful tone of
  voice (Keltner, Capps, Kring, Young, Heerey,
  2001).
• One type of playful tease is object/attribute
  mislabeling. For example, a mother might pick up
  a toy dog and call it a Kitty.
• Such teases may constitute early opportunities
  for children to monitor comprehension
  (Skarakis-Doyle, 2002) and are clear exposures to
  early nonliteral utterances.
• Previous research has examined the use of
  prosodic markers during play and ordinary
  activities (Reissland Snow, 1996) but not
  prosody during playful mislabeling utterances and
  sincere utterances.
• In an interview regarding teases practices, 60
  of mothers indicated that they used a special
  tone of voice during teases to indicate playful
  intent (Burnett Milosky, 2005).
• The present study used a seminaturalistic
  methodology to answer the following question to
  determine if mothers were correct in their
  perception that they use a special tone of voice
  for playful teasing
• Do the prosodic characteristics of fundamental
  frequency (f0) differ between selected
  mislabeling tease utterances and sincere (i.e.,
  not teasing) utterances?

• Findings for Entire Corpus
• The entire corpus consisted of 60 mislabel tease
  utterances and 60 matched sincere utterances for
  a total of 120 utterances.
• Paired t-tests (a.05) were used to verify that
  the sentences were of equal length. For teases,
  sentences averaged 1.14 seconds and for sincere
  utterances, sentences averaged 1.10 seconds
  (p.58).
• A paired t-test (a.05) of the mothers mean f0
  during teasing and sincere utterances approached
  significance (p.047).
• A paired t-test (a.05) of the mothers range f0
  (maximum-minimum) was significant (p.02)
  indicating that mothers used a wider pitch range
  during teases than during sincere utterances.

Methods

• A subset of 15 dyads, children ages 18 through 33
  months (M24), from urban and suburban areas of
  the greater Syracuse area was used for the
  current analyses since those mothers demonstrated
  mislabel teases. These children were part of a
  larger study of 31 dyads examining playful
  teasing between mothers and young children
  (Burnett Milosky,2005)
• Each mother-child dyad was seen for one two-hour
  session at home involving an examiner-generated
• interview regarding teasing practices (Heerey,
  Capps, Keltner, Kring, 2005) and 20-45 minutes
  of
• play in which the mother demonstrated typical
  playful teasing exchanges.
• Sessions were videotaped and analyzed for the
  presence of playful teases. Of the different
  types
• identified (Interrater reliability was 80 for
  identifying tease types), object/attribute
  mislabel teases
• (e.g. calling a dog a kitty) were selected
  for the current analysis.
• Each mother wore an external lapel microphone to
  capture optimal audio recording of her voice.
• Four mislabel teases were chosen for each mother
  (n60) and a sincere utterance was matched to
  each tease utterance (n60) for approximate
  length in words, utterance type (i.e., assertion
  or question) and when possible, initial semantic
  content (e.g., Is that a cow? matched to Is
  that a fish?). All utterances chosen
  were free from excessive background noise (e.g.,
  loud toys).

Conclusions
References

• Mothers demonstrated more pitch variation (range
  f0) during mislabel tease utterances than during
  sincere utterances.
• Pitch variability, as measured by f0 range,
  differed for questions but not for assertions.
• While average pitch did not differ between
  mislabel tease utterances and sincere utterances,
  the use of a wider pitch range demonstrates that
  mothers are correct in their assumption that they
  use a special tone of voice when teasing their
  children.

Boersma, P. and Weenink, D. (2006). Praat doing
phonetics by computer (Version 4.4.07) Computer
program. Retrieved from http//www.praat.org/B
urnett, D. and Milosky, L. (2005). Language-based
playful teasing between mothers and young
children. Poster presented at ASHA Convention,
San Diego, CA.. Heerey, E., Capps, L., Keltner,
D. and Kring, A. (2005). Understanding teases
lessons from children with autism. Journal of
Abnormal Child Psychology, 33, 55-68. Keltner,
D., Capps, L., Kring, A., Young, R., and Heerey,
E. (2001). Just teasing a conceptual analysis
and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin,
127, 2, 229-248. Reissland, N. and Snow, D.
(1996). Maternal pitch height in ordinary and
play situations. Journal of Child Language, 23,
269- 278. Skarakis-Doyle, E. (2002). Young
childrens detection of violations in familiar
stories and emerging comprehension monitoring.
Discourse Processes, 33, 2, 175-197. Wood, S.
(2005). Praat for beginners Manual. Retrieved
from http//www.ling.lu.se/persons
/Sidney/praate/

• Analyses using Praat (Boersma Weenink, 2006
  Wood, 2005)
• Audio files were digitized using Praat from
  Panasonic Mini-DV Camcorder recordings using a
  32000 Hz sampling rate.
• Each utterance was saved as a WAV file and then
  analyzed for mean f0, minimum f0, maximum f0, and
  standard deviation of f0.
• The pitch extraction algorithm reported
  fundamental frequency (f0) values for each 0.01
  seconds of voiced speech.

Acknowledgements
The research was supported in part by an ASHA
Special Interest Division 1 Language Learning
and Education Student Research Grant to the first
author. Special thanks to Stefanie Hayes and
Rachel Neuman for their help with data collection
and to Hannah Burke, Amy Brown, Emily DeSalvo and
Lindsay Rapke for all their help with data
analysis.
For further information contact Debra Burnett at
deburnet_at_syr.edu