Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the causal connectivity of the statements (their total number of causal connections) and the modality of presentation of discourse (oral-written) in the generation of emotion inferences by Spanish-speaking students. With this aim, we asked a group of Argentine college students to either listen to or read an excerpt of a radio interview (on the topic ‘Argentine radio presenters’ relationship with the audience’), and to perform an emotions recall task. Results indicated that statements that promoted the generation of emotion inferences and had a high number of causal connections were more often included in the recall protocols than those that promoted the generation of these inferences and had a low number of them. They also indicated that participants who were presented with the spoken version of the materials included a higher number of statements in this task than those that were presented with the written version. These findings suggest that the establishment of meaningful discourse connections has a role in the generation of emotion inferences, and that there appear to be differences in the representation that listeners and readers construct of speakers’ emotions.

摘要

这项研究的目的是检验陈述的因果联系（因果关系的总数）和讲西班牙语的口语表达方式（口头书面形式）在生成情绪推理中的作用。为此，我们要求一群阿根廷大学生收听或阅读广播访谈的摘录（主题为“阿根廷广播节目主持人与观众的关系”），并执行情绪回忆任务。结果表明，促成情绪推理产生并具有大量因果联系的陈述比促成这些推理产生且具有较少因果关系的陈述更常包含在召回协议中。他们还指出，与书面版本相比，向他们提供口头版本材料的参与者在本任务中所包含的陈述数量更多。这些发现表明，有意义的话语联系的建立在情感推论的产生中起着作用，并且听者和阅读者建构说话者情感的表达方式似乎存在差异。