This thesis's aim was to examine the effect of vocal intonation on mental state understanding. This thesis has found that vocal intonation provides important cues for communicating the intentions of others' to infants. The results indicate that infants rely on intonation when making attributions about other people's goal-directed behaviour. These results were first found using an imitation paradigm and extended and confirmed with a looking time paradigm. The first two experimental chapters of this thesis have shown that the tone of voice is a salient cue to mental states. Infants did not only distinguish between intentional and accidental words such as "Whoops" and "There" but they also made the distinction between intentional and accidental mental states from the intonation alone. A looking time measure has also shown promising results for the same distinction between intentional and accidental mental states. The looking time study has confirmed and extended the findings that we saw through imitation. Infants seemed able to distinguish between an intentional and an accidental intonation and looked longer during scenes where the accidental intonation was paired with the end-result. These findings are the first to report results on the intonation of accidental and intentional mental states. The results of this thesis contribute to the literature concerning intention understanding and they extend our knowledge about intonation and the significant role it plays in infancy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:584090 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Sakkalou, Elena |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54661/ |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds