Western Journal of Speech Communication, 55 (Spring 1991), 198-214

Vocal Cues and Children's Mental

Representations of Narratives:
Effects of Incongruent Cues
on Story Comprehension
DIANE M. BADZINSKI

An experiment investigated the influence of vocal intonation on children's processing of

explicit and implicit text concepts. Children at two age levels (5 & 7 year olds) listened
to narratives in which the story characters' affective tones were either consistent or in-
consistent with story content. The children's comprehension of the narratives was assessed
through a cued recall, recognition, and free recall task. Overall, the discrepant cues tend-
ed to affect children's processing of implicit but not explicit text material. Several age
level differences were also observed. The cues influenced the older but not the younger
children's speed of processing implicit information. On the other hand, vocal intonation
affected the younger but not the older children's appraisals of story outcome. It was
speculated that young children assign more weight to vocal information in making
assessments of story outcome than do older children.

Ithemental
T is WELL DOCUMENTED that comprehension involves constructing a
representation of the text. This construction process entails
integration of explicit material with information that can be
reasonably inferred from the text contents (Bower, Black, & Turner,
1979; Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983).
In building a representation, social actors must detect "clues" and
assimilate this knowledge as part of their mental model. While young
children may be able to detect these cues, they may not see the rele-
vancy of such knowledge for message interpretation nor possess the skills
necessary for integrating separate pieces of information to form a
representation. This paper presents the second in a series which ex-
amines the link between cue detection and message comprehension (see
Badzinski, 1989b). Specifically, this article addresses the role of vocal
information on children's understanding of narratives.

DIANE M. BADZINSKI (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is assistant professor

of Speech Communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
This research was supported by a grant from the University of Nebraska Research Coun-
cil (#LWT/05-239-90301). The author acknowledges her appreciation to the Lincoln Public
School District and the staff and students of Holmes Elementary and Malone Communi-
ty Day Care Center. Special thanks are also extended to Brent Stichka and Angela Jones
for transcribing and coding the data.
Spring 1991 199

How might vocal cues affect comprehension? It is proposed that vocal

cues play two distinct roles in message understanding. First, vocal cues
serve to reduce the number of plausible text representations. Most
messages are sufficiently ambiguous as to allow social actors to select
among several plausible models. In selecting the models, the social ac-
tors must evaluate both the textual and extratextual evidence, with the
final selection determined by the number and strength of cues indict-
ing a particular interpretation. The voice contains important clues to
message interpretation that adults integrate into the meaning of
sentences (Geiselman & Bellezza, 1976, 1977; Geiselman & Crawley,
1983). Such cues guide actors in selecting a representation by reducing
the pool of plausible models. This reduction process occurs as a result
of stacking the evidence in favor of a given representation.
Second, vocal cues aid comprehension by enhancing memory for text
material and facilitating inferential processing. Social actors neither
remember entire dialogues (Keenan, MacWhinney, & Mayhew, 1977;
Stafford, Burggraf, & Sharkey, 1987; Stafford & Daly, 1984) nor do they
construct all possible inferences (Clark, 1975). Rather, actors tend to
remember important material (Meyer, 1975; Meyer & McConkie, 1973)
and to construct inferences from central rather than peripheral concepts
(Walker & Meyer, 1980; Walker & Yekovich, 1984). The question
becomes "How do social actors isolate important ideas?" One answer to
this question is that textual and extratextual cues influence one's percep-
tion of the importance of the material being presented, and in turn in-
crease both the likelihood of remembering the material and constructing
inferential elaborations (Badzinski, 1989a). Memory and integration are
better with information of high importance due to increased process-
ing. The cues can trigger additional processing by activating related
text concepts in memory (Anderson, 1983; Bower, 1981; Collins & Loftus,
1975). This process results in a richer representation of the material
than if the related concepts had not been activated.
In the study which preceded the one presented here (Badzinski,
1989b), the link between vocal cues and message understanding was
examined. In that study, first and third grade children listened to several
short stories. The narratives were told in a tone of voice that either
strongly or weakly cued the emotional states of the story characters.
Based on the children's scores on a series of comprehension tests, it was
concluded that vocal cues influenced the probability of drawing extratex-
tual extensions. Although age-related differences were expected, both
first and third graders detected the cues and assimilated this informa-
tion in forming a representation.
In the first study, the information conveyed through the vocal chan-
nel was consistent with story content, and thus vocal information pro-
vided convergent evidence for a given interpretation. In the current study,
the role of discrepant cues on narrative comprehension was investigated
by having children listen to stories in which vocal information was
200 Western Journal of Speech Communication
either consistent or inconsistent with story content. While the young
children should be able to detect the discrepant cues (Blanck & Rosen-
thai, 1982; Bugental, Kaswan, Love, & Fox, 1970; Solomon & Ali, 1972;
Volkmar & Siegel, 1979; Zuckerman, Blanck, DePaulo, & Rosenthal,
1980), the concern here is the extent to which children alter their inter-
pretations in light of the inconsistencies. A tendency to integrate the
discrepant cues should create interference and impede text processing.
More specifically, the children should be better able to remember text
concepts and construct extratextual extensions given affect consistent
rather than affect inconsistent narratives. In other words, consistent
cues should facilitate comprehension while discrepant ones slow the
process.
A developmental increase in children's ability to integrate inconsis-
tent cues when interpreting discrepant messages is also expected. This
prediction is based on studies demonstrating that as children develop
they become more efficient at detecting and interpreting discrepant
nonverbal messages (J. Andersen, P. Andersen, Murphy, & Wendt-
Wasco, 1985; Blanck & Rosenthal, 1982; Zuckerman et al., 1989). To
illustrate, teachers report that only about 23% of kindergartners under-
stand the statement "that's good" when said in a tone of voice that means
"that's bad" while over 40% of third graders could interpret such dis-
crepant messages (J. Andersen, et al., 1985). Not only should older
children be better at interpreting discrepant messages, the type of
nonverbal behaviors children rely on when interpreting incongruent
messages might also change with age. Whereas young children, for in-
stance, rely on facial expression when facial and vocal messages are
discrepant, older elementary school age children do not (Zuckerman, et
al., 1980). Further, recent studies have shown age-related improvements
in children's ability to integrate various nonverbal cues when inter-
preting others' affective states (Hoffner & Badzinski, 1989; Wiggers &
van Lieshout, 1985).
Why might young children fail to integrate the discrepant cues? It
is not unreasonable to suggest that young children might select the
strategy which entails the least amount of energy (DePaulo & Rosen-
thal, 1979). Hence, it may be that ignoring or discarding discrepant cues
involves less effort than does integration. This strategy might be espe-
cially appealing when integration produces undesirable or unexpected
outcomes. One of the main factors affecting children's interpretations
might simply be the preferred or anticipated model rather than the one
prompted by textual and extratextual cues. It is also possible that young
children do not have the skills to integrate discrepant material or
perceive the relevancy of such information for message understanding.
In the current study, comprehension processes among a younger
population of subjects than that studied in the initial experiment were
investigated. The decision to examine narrative comprehension of
children in the 5-7 year old range was based on evidence suggesting that
Spring 1991 201

some time prior to first grade, children learn the skills necessary to
detect vocal cues and integrate this knowledge to form representations
of narratives (Badzinski, 1989b). Other studies have also suggested that
critical processing skills are acquired between the ages of 4 and 7
(Thompson & Myers, 1985).

Hypotheses
In light of the above discussion, the following hypotheses were ad-
vanced: Relative to the affect consistent cues,
HI: The presence of inconsistent vocal cues decreases children's memory for explicit
text concepts.
H2: The presence of inconsistent vocal cues decreases the probability of drawing in-
ferential elaborations.
H3: The presence of inconsistent vocal cues decreases the speed of processing explicit
and implicit text material.
Furthermore, it was expected that:
H4: The older children would be more likely than the younger ones to integrate the
inconsistent information in drawing inferential elaborations and making
judgments about story outcomes.

To test these hypotheses, three different comprehension tasks were

designed. The tests included a cued recall, recognition, and free recall
task. Such measures have been used to assess children's memory of text
material and inferential skill (Badzinski, 1989a, 1989b; Lorch, Bellack,
& Augsbach, 1987; Thompson & Myers, 1985). The children's response
latencies to explicit and implicit items served as a nonverbal indicant
of comprehension, with quick response times signaling ease of
understanding (Patterson, Cosgrove, & O'Brien, 1980). Children's percep-
tions of story outcomes were also gathered.

METHOD
Subjects
A total of 40 children participated in this experiment. The children
attended either a day care center or an elementary school in Lincoln,
Nebraska. The mean age of the younger children was five years, eight
months, while the mean age of the older children was seven years, five
months. The two groups were labeled 5 and 7 year olds, respectively.
The number of boys to girls was 10:10 for the younger subjects and 11:9
for the older ones. All children received parental permission before par-
ticipating. The 7 year olds also signed child assent forms.

Design
The study employed a 2 x 2 x 4 design involving type of affect (con-
sistent, inconsistent) and age of subject (5 and 7 year olds) as between
subject factors with story selection treated as a repeated factor.
202 Western Journal of Speech Communication

Materials
Originally, three scripts designed to elicit a negative and three
designed to elicit a positive response were made. The six stories ranged
from 74 to 104 words in length and contained 11 or 12 sentences. Each
narrative consisted of a short dialogue between a young boy and girl
discussing the events of the past day. In each story, a mechanical cause
was specified to account for the event sequence. That is, each story
described a physical cause which triggered a sequence of events. The
six scripts were prejudged by a minimum of 12 subjects (groups of in-
troductory communication students). Scripts were retained only if they
were rated as positive (or negative) by all subjects. The final selection
consisted of four stories in which three elicited a negative and one pro-
duced a positive response. A male graduate student within the speech
communication department served as the "voice" for the boy and a female
student served as the "voice" for the girl characters. The stories were
read with both a positive and negative expression and recorded on
audiocassette tapes. The actors selected whatever way of saying the story
that came naturally to them (cf., Bugental et al., 1970). An attempt was
made to obtain realistic positive and negative vocal tones realizing that
such a decision prohibits identifying the specific vocal parameters
manipulated.

In order to determine whether the stimuli contained the intended

expression, independent ratings of the vocal tones were obtained. A
minimum of 15 college students heard either the vocal consistent or in-
consistent stories and were asked to indicate the valence (positive or
negative) and intensity of the expressed emotion. The students were in-
structed to base their judgments on the storytellers' vocal characteristics
and not to let story content influence their ratings. All participants iden-
tified the intended valence. In addition, the intensity of expressed emo-
tion did not differ between the affect consistent or inconsistent stories
(using 7-point scales, consistent, M = 4.15; inconsistent, M = 4.25). It
should be noted that the pretest was conducted with a vastly different
subject population than that used in the present study. In light of this
limitation, a manipulation check, requiring the children to rate the in-
tensity of the expressed emotion, was included as part of the actual
study.1

Experimental Questions
Cued recall. For each of the four stories, questions for the cued recall
and recognition tasks were constructed. The cued recall task consisted
of four questions in which two of the questions dealt with information
explicit in the story and two pertained to information that could be
reasonably inferred from the information presented. For example, one
story described the adventures of a little girl whose dog ran in front
of a truck. The explicit questions assessed children's memory for text
Spring 1991 203
information (e.g., "Did Sparky run in front of a truck?") while the im-
plicit items assessed the children's tendency to make certain inferences
(e.g., "Did Sparky get hurt?").
Recognition. For each narrative, the recognition task consisted of five
words in which two words were explicitly mentioned in the text (e.g.,
"truck"), and two were words that could be reasonably inferred from the
text (e.g., "hurt"). A word that was blatantly not in the narratives served
as a nonsense word included to identify inattentive subjects. The test
involved presenting the children with the list of words and asking them
to decide whether or not the words were in the narratives. The correct
response to the explicit items was "yes" as the words did appear in the
narratives, while "no" was the correct response to the nonsense items.
The key recognition items were those words that expressed potential
inferences (e.g., "hurt") in which the correct response was "no" as the
words were not in the narratives. Hence, an integration of implicit
material was signaled by errors in the implicit items. An example of
one of the four stories is presented in Table 1.

TABLE 1
Sample Story and Question Set
Laura and her cat named Fluffy were outside playing. Her brother Bill was just arriv-
ing home from school. He was about to go in the house. Laura said:
Laura: Maybe you should stay outside.
Bill: How come?
Laura: Well, mom was at the kitchen table pouring chocolate milk into the glasses. But
before mom could stop her, Fluffy jumped on the table and began leaping on the plates.
She knocked one of the glasses.
Bill: Oh!
Laura: Mom grabbed Fluffy off the table and threw her on the floor. She hollered that
Fluffy and I should stay outside in the backyard until supper.
Comprehension Questions
Explicit: Did Fluffy knock one of the glasses?
Was Laura's mom pouring chocolate milk into the glasses?
Implicit: Did Fluffy spill the milk?
Was Laura's mom angry with Fluffy?
Recognition Words
Explicit: knocked
chocolate
Implicit: spilled
angry
Nonsense: zoo
204 Western Journal of Speech Communication
Free recall. A recall task was also designed to investigate the effects
of vocal information on the likelihood of spontaneously constructing
extratextual extensions. This task simply involved the children retell-
ing the narrative.
Ratings. Questions were also constructed to obtain children's ratings
of the intensity of the portrayed emotion and the magnitude of the con-
sequence. Intensity ratings were obtained on 4-point rating scales which
were constructed on 50 x 15 cm pieces of cardboard that consisted of
four progressively larger circles. Below each circle was the emotion (e.g.,
"sad") along with the modifier (e.g., "pretty") indicating the different
levels of intensity. Similar scales were constructed to obtain children's
ratings of the magnitude of the consequence.
Procedure
All children were interviewed individually by a female experimenter.
The children were first administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test-revised (PPVT-r; Dunn & Dunn, 1981). The children's scores on this
test were used as a covariate. Such precaution was necessary as research
has shown that vocabulary proficiency is related to children's success
on comprehension tasks (Badzinski, 1989a, 1989b; Freebody & Ander-
son, 1983). After completing the vocabulary test, the children listened
to the four affect consistent or inconsistent stories. The stories were
presented in one of two random orders.
To introduce the experimental task, the experimenter told the
children that "I want to find out what you think happens in stories. So
I want you to listen carefully to some stories and then I am going to
ask you some questions about what happened in the stories." Immediate-
ly following the presentation of the first story, the children were in-
structed to retell the story. Specifically, the experimenter said "to pre-
tend that I never heard the story and tell me what happened in the
story." The children's responses were recorded.
The children then engaged in the cued recall and recognition task.
The cued recall task involved the children responding to the two explicit
and two implicit questions. If the children responded affirmatively to
the implicit questions, then the experimenter produced the correspond-
ing rating scale, read the phrases aloud and asked the subjects for their
responses. These ratings were used to obtain children's judgments of
the intensity of the emotion portrayed and the magnitude of the conse-
quence.
The recognition task required the children to decide whether certain
words were stated in the story. The children were told that the answers
to the questions would be either "yes" or "no." The experimenter then
read the recognition words aloud and asked the children to determine
whether the word was or was not stated in the story. Specifically, the
children were told the following:
Spring 1991 205

The next part is a little tricky. I am going to say a word. If you heard the word stated
in the story, then you should say "yes" but if the word was not stated in the story, then
you should say "no." You need to think real hard. The words are tricky. Remember, if
you heard the word in the story (experimenter pointed to the audiocassette player) then
you should say "yes." If the word was not stated in the story, then you should say "no."
Within each condition, the order of the recognition words were
systematically rotated from subject to subject. The order of the alter-
natives (yes/no) were counterbalanced from subject to subject. Identical
procedures were followed for the remaining three story selections.

RESULTS
All analyses of variance were conducted using the fixed-effect
unweighted-means approach, and subsequent comparisons were per-
formed using the Student Newman Keuls method. All analyses included
affect manipulation and age as between subject factors, with PPVT-r
scores as a covariate. In preliminary investigations, analyses were run
with story selection as a repeated factor. There were no significant ef-
fects for story. Thus, the decision was made to sum the children's scores
across the four stories.2

Manipulation Check
Intensity ratings. The children's mean ratings of the intensity of the
emotion expressed in the stories are presented in Table 2. If the subject
responded affirmatively to the question probing for his or her percep-
tion of the emotional state of the story character (e.g., "Was Laura's mom
angry?"), he or she then rated the intensity of the emotion on scales that
ranged from 1 (e.g., "a little bit angry") to 4 (e.g., "very very angry"),
with a "no" response coded as 0.3 It was reasoned that an awareness
of the vocal cues should lead to higher intensity ratings given consis-
tent rather than discrepant messages.
In terms of subjects' ratings of the intensity of the emotion expressed,
the analysis revealed only a main effect for vocal manipulation (F [1,35]
= 8.86, p < .01, eta2 = .20). As predicted, higher ratings of emotional
intensity were obtained from children in the consistent (M = 3.39) than
inconsistent condition (M = 2.42). Thus, the subjects at both age levels
demonstrated an awareness of the vocal manipulations.

Perception of Story Outcome

The analysis of subjects' ratings of the magnitude of the consequence
revealed only a vocal manipulation x age group interaction (F [1,35] =
4.04, p < .05, eta2 = .10). As shown in Table 2, 5 year olds in the affect
consistent condition (M = 3.10) assigned higher consequent ratings than
did the 5 year olds in the inconsistent condition (M = 2.30). On the other
hand, the affect manipulation did not affect the 7 year olds' judgments
of the consequence (consistent, M = 2.43; inconsistent, M = 2.70).
206 Western Journal of Speech Communication

TABLE 2
Children's Ratings of the Intensity of Expressed Emotion
and the Magnitude of the Consequence

Age of Subject
5 year olds 7 year olds
(n = 20) (n = 20)
Intensity of Emotion Mean
Consistent 3.45 ( .78) 3.32 ( .82) 3.39
Inconsistent 2.28(1.64) 2.56(1.31) 2.42
Mean 2.87 2.94
Magnitude of Consequence
Consistent 3.10 ( .92) 2.43 ( .73) 2.67
Inconsistent 2.30 (1.67) 2.70 (1.07) 2.50
Mean 2.70 2.57
NOTE: Scores ranged from 0 (e.g., "no, Laura's mom was not angry") to 4 (e.g., "very very
angry"). The numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.

Apparently, affect congruency has a greater influence on judgments of

story consequence for the 5 than 7 year olds.

Cued Recall
Responses. The children answered two explicit and two implicit ques-
tions for each of the four stories. The children's responses to the explicit
items were considered correct provided the children mentioned the
probed information. The children were credited with the correct response
to the implicit questions upon making certain inferences. Two
undergraduate students coded the responses. There were no
disagreements. With the exception of four children at the younger age
group, the children responded correctly to the cued explicit and implicit
questions. Thus, vocal tone had no influence on children's memory of
text information and the likelihood of inference construction. Although
this result could be accounted for by a ceiling effect, the excellent per-
formance on this task suggests that the vast majority of the children
remembered the story information and constructed certain elaborations
when probed.

Recognition
Responses. The children's scores on the recognition task are presented
in Table 3. Due to the low frequency of correct responses to the implicit
items, arcsine transformations were performed on this data prior to
analyses."
Spring 1991 207

TABLE 3
Mean Number of Correct Responses and Response
Latencies to the Recognition Items

Age of Subject
5 year olds 7 year olds
(n = 20) (n = 20)

Responses Mean
Explicit
Consistent 5.70 (1.57) 6.00 (1.33) 5.85
Inconsistent 4.90 (2.68) 5.40 (1.58) 5.15
Mean 5.30 5.70
Implicit
Consistent 1.30 (1.83) 1.60 (1.64) 1.45
Inconsistent 2.70 (2.05) 2.80 (2.57) 2.75
Mean 2.00 2.20
Response Latencies
Explicit
Consistent 2.47 ( .69) 2.07 ( .50) 2.24
Inconsistent 1.98 ( .59) 2.41 ( .69) 2.20
Mean 2.23 2.24
Implicit
Consistent 1.79 ( .37) 1.94 ( .71) 1.87
Inconsistent 1.49 ( .44) 2.63 ( .80) 2.06
Mean 1.64 2.29
NOTE: Highest score possible was 8. The numbers in parentheses are standard devia-
tions. Response latencies are reported in seconds.

For the explicit items, the analysis revealed no significant effects.

The analysis on the inferential items revealed a main effect for affect
manipulation (F[l,35] = 8.82, p < .01, eta2 = .20). The children in the
affect inconsistent condition (M = 2.75) were more likely than those in
the affect consistent condition (M =1.45) to correctly acknowledge that
the implicit items did not appear in the texts. Thus, the integration of
implicit material was more likely among those children in the affect
consistent than affect inconsistent condition. The low scores overall on
the inference items revealed that the children tended to indicate that
the inference words appeared in the stories. No other effects were
significant.
Response latencies. The children's response times to the recognition
items were measured (in l/100th of a sec) from the end of the experi-
menter's question (e.g., "Did you hear the word HURT?") until the
208 Western Journal of Speech Communication

start of the children's response. Two coders, blind-to both experimental

condition and hypotheses, individually coded 50% of the data. For each
response, the coders timed the response using a stop watch. Each coder
then obtained another reading of the response time, continuing this pro-
cedure until he or she had three readings that were within 5/100th of
a sec. from each other. The average of these three readings was taken.
Coder reliability was calculated by the number of agreements divided
by the total number of agreements and disagreements. The obtained
response times were counted as agreements if they were within .50 sec
(cf., Patterson et al., 1980 using 1.00 second as criterion for agreement).
The coders achieved 93% agreement. All disagreements were resolved
by a third coder timing the response and then taking the average of
the times of the two coders whose readings were the closest. The remain-
ing data were coded by one of the trained coders.
The analyses on children's response times to the explict items re-
vealed a significant vocal manipulation x age group interaction (F [1,35]
= 4.80, p < .05, eta2 =.12). Although the vocal manipulation did not
produce response time differences among the 7 year olds, the 5 year olds
in the affect consistent condition responded significantly slower
(M = 2.47 sec) than did their counterparts in the inconsistent condition
(M = 1.98 sec).
In regards to children's response latencies to the implicit items, the
analysis produced a main effect for age (F [1,35] = 4.48, p < .05, eta2
= .11). As can be observed from the data present in Table 3, the 7 year
olds took longer to respond to the implicit items than did the 5 year olds.
This main effect for age, however, was qualified by a vocal manipula-
tion x age group interaction (F [1,35] = 5.22, p < .05, eta2 = .13).
Whereas vocal intonation had no effect on processing speed for the 5
year olds (consistent, M = 1.79 sec; inconsistent, M = 1.49 sec), the 7
year olds in the inconsistent condition (M = 2.63 sec) took longer to re-
spond to the implicit items than did their counterparts in the affect con-
sistent condition (M = 1.93 sec).

Recall Protocols
The children's recall protocols were transcribed and then coded in
terms of whether the protocols included the probed inferences. Since the
subjects recalled four stories and two types of inferences were implicated
in each text, the highest score possible was eight. The protocols were
coded independently by two students who achieved excellent reliabili-
ty (Cohen's Kappa = .83). Disagreements were resolved through discus-
sion between the two coders.
The mean number of inferences the children included in their recall
protocols is presented in Table 4. The analysis produced a main effect
for vocal manipulation (F [1,35] = 7.47, p < .01, eta2 = .17) and age
level (F[l,35] = 5.07, p < .01, eta2 = .12). The interaction effect was
Spring 1991 209

TABLE 4
Mean Number of Inferences Included in Recall Protocols

Age of Subject
5 year olds 7 year olds
(n = 20) (n = 20)
Inferences Mean
Consistent 1.70(1.06) 2.30(1.15) 2.00
Inconsistent .60 ( .52) 1.60 ( .70) 1.10
Mean 1.15 1.95
NOTE: Highest score possible was 8. The numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.

not significant (F [1,35] = .38, p > .05). The children were more likely
to construct inferences given the affect consistent (M = 2.00) than in-
consistent texts (M = 1.10), even though the likelihood of spontaneous-
ly constructing the inferences was not great (M = 1.55). Inference con-
struction during recall was also more likely among the 7 (M = 1.95)
than 5 year olds (Af = 1.15).

DISCUSSION
The results of the present study provide at least partial support for
two of the four hypotheses. Contrary to expectation, vocal information
did not affect children's remembrances of explicit text ideas. Although
no support for hypothesis 1 was found, the data lend strong support for
hypothesis 2. Relative to the children in the affect consistent condition,
those who heard the discrepant narratives tended to indicate correctly
that the implicit items had not appeared in the narratives. An ability
to distinguish implicit from explicit material suggests that the integra-
tion of implicit items had not occurred. This conclusion is further
supported by the results of the free recall data. Fewer inferential elab-
orations were constructed during recall by those children hearing the
discrepant than congruent narratives.
It was also anticipated that the discrepant cues would produce slow
response times to the explicit and implicit items, at least compared to
those times obtained by the children in the vocal consistent condition.
This prediction, hypothesis 3, gained only partial support. Whereas vocal
cues did not affect the 7 year olds' responses to the explicit recognition
items, the younger children actually responded in a manner opposite
of that predicted. Contrary to expectation, the 5 year olds responded more
quickly to the inconsistent than consistent narratives. This data sug-
gest that the young subjects might have been more attentive to the
discrepant narratives. In turn, the discrepant messages produced quick
response times to the explicit memory items. Clearly, the speculation
210 Western Journal of Speech Communication
that discrepancy enhanced attentiveness among the young subjects
merits further exploration.
In terms of children's response times to the implicit items, the dis-
crepant cues did impede processing as predicted but only among the older
participants. The 7 year olds who heard the affect inconsistent stories
responded more slowly to the implicit items than did their counterparts
in the consistent condition. It appears that the 7 year olds confronted
with the discrepant cues proceeded more cautiously than did the 5 year
olds faced with the identical situation.
Finally, the results of the study provide little support for hypothesis
4. It was expected that as children develop they would be better able
to integrate vocal cues when interpreting messages. Contrary to predic-
tion, age-related differences in responses to the inferential test items
as a function of vocal cues did not emerge. Children's judgments of story
outcome, however, did vary with age but in the opposite direction
predicted. Whereas the 5 year olds rated the magnitude of the conse-
quence more severe given the vocally congruent than incongruent
stories, the manipulation had no effect on the 7 year olds' appraisals
of story outcome. Since story content was identical in both conditions,
a reliance on text information should produce similar judgments of the
severity of the outcome. In appraising the situation, it appears that the
7 year olds assigned more weight to the information presented in the
texts than did the younger children. On the other hand, the 5 year olds
reacted more to the emotional tone of the narrators than did the older
subjects.
Even though 5 year olds seem to have relied more on affect tone than
on story content, it cannot be the case that the young children failed
to process the text information and relied only on vocal cues. The results
of the cued recall task showed that the respondents drew inferential links
from text concepts despite conflicting vocal information. Similarly, it
cannot be the case that the young children were more sensitive to the
vocal cues than were the older ones. The study revealed no age-related
differences on respondents' ratings of the emotion portrayed, with both
the 5 and 7 year olds assigning higher intensity ratings to the affect
consistent stories. Although the children at both age levels noticed the
different emotional tones, the importance of the cues in outcome
judgments appears to have been greater for the 5 than 7 year olds.
Investigators need to identify developmental trends in terms of the
types of judgments influenced by vocal intonation. Whereas content is
an important cue for "objective" feedback, intonation conveys largely
"emotional" information (Mehrabian & Weiner, 1967; Solomon &
Yaeger, 1969). Vocal cues might be particularly important for adults
in making relational or perceptual judgments (e.g., ratings of liking),
while verbal information is critical for making objective decisions (e.g.,
the likelihood that an event occurred). On the other hand, the different
cues might be attributed equal weight in making perceptual and
Spring 1991 211

objective assessments for young and learning disabled children. Age-

related differences in the relative weight assigned to the cues are to be
expected, particularly in light of recent findings pointing out
developmental changes in the weights children assign to different
nonverbal cues when making judgments of others' affective states (Hoff-
ner & Badzinski, 1989; Matsumoto & Kishimoto, 1983; Wiggers & van
Lieshout, 1985).
Finally, it should be kept in mind that the cued recall and recogni-
tion task involved simply "yes" and "no" responses. This methodological
choice has both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, the
task was simplified such that it did not involve verbal explanations.
Thus, verbal proficiency could not account for age differences in perfor-
mances. Another advantage of this procedure was that a measure of pro-
cessing time could be obtained. On the negative side, test simplicity could
explain the obtained ceiling effect on the cued recall task. One could
also argue that the cued recall and recognition results were simply due
to a response bias such that the children tended to respond affirmative-
ly to the experimenter's questions (Paris, 1978). Although response bias
is a possibility, few errors on the "nonsense items" indicated that even
the youngest children were willing to give "no" as a response. It is also
important to realize that response bias is limited to explaining age-
related changes and not the observed condition differences.
At the moment, discourse comprehension models do not specifically
address the link between nonverbal behaviors and message understand-
ing, although several writers have pointed out the value of attending
to such an issue (Berger, 1989; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983, p. 19; Woodall
& Folger, 1985). In the present study, a link between vocal cues and
children's integration of implicit material was established while the ex-
pected tie to children's remembrances of explicit story content was not
observed. An association of vocal behaviors to preschoolers' assessments
of story outcome has also been unveiled. Furthermore, vocal behaviors
affected the speed to which inferential extensions were drawn, at least
among the 7 year olds. Unquestionably, further investigations are war-
ranted to more fully understand the contributions of nonverbal behaviors
to message comprehension.

ENDNOTES
1. To justify collapsing the positive text/negative voice and negative text/positive voice
into the "inconsistent" condition and the positive text/positive voice and negative
text/negative voice into the "consistent" condition, text (positive vs. negative) and voice
(positive vs. negative) were run as separate factors with age level as a between subject
factor. Separate analyses were run on each of the dependent measures and no significant
results emerged. An age level x text interaction on the inferential items of the recogni-
tion task did approach significance (p .09). An examination of the means suggests no
age differences in responses to positive texts (5 year olds, M = 1.92; 7 year olds, M =
2.08) but that the negative texts produced more correct responses to the inferential items
among the younger (M = 2.53) than older children (M = 1.86). To interpret this finding,
212 Western Journal of Speech Communication

it is important to note that errors on the inferential items mark a tendency to integrate
explicit and implicit ideas. Thus, the older subjects were more likely to draw inferences
from the negative texts than were the younger children. This finding deserves further
investigation as it suggests that age-related differences might be especially pronounced
given negative story content. It should be kept in mind that no effects pertaining to positive
vs. negative voice approached significance (p .20).
2. Since studies have reported that females tend to be more attentive to nonverbal cues
than are males (DePaulo & Rosenthal, 1979; Hall, 1978), all analyses reported in the
manuscript were also run including sex as a between subject factor in the design. The
only significant result involving sex as a factor was a vocal manipulation x sex interac-
tion. This effect emerged on the children's response times to the implicit recognition items.
Although the boys and girls who heard the consistent stories did not differ in response
times to the implicit items (boys, M = 1.86 sec, girls, M = 1.87 sec), the girls who heard
the discrepant narratives took significantly longer to respond (M = 2.27 sec) than did
the boys who heard such stories (M = 1.86 sec, F[l,34] = 7.09, p .05, eta2 = .17). Ap-
parently, the girls proceeded more cautiously than did the boys when confronted with
the discrepant information. Sex was not included as a factor in the analyses reported in
the text due to the number of factors already in the design relative to the number of children
who participated in the study.
3. Although precedent exists for using this type of scale to obtain children's assessments
of specific stimuli (Badzinski, 1989a; 1989b; Hoffner & Badzinski, 1989; Wilson & Can-
tor, 1987), it could be argued that the young children are not able to distinguish between
the different points on the response boards. To address this concern, the children's answers
were recoded to 3 (0 = "not at all," 1 = "a little bit," 2 = "pretty" to "very very") rather
than 5-point scales. The 3-point scales produced identical results to those reported in the
text. Using the 3-point scales, the analysis of affect intensity revealed that the consistent
narratives were assigned higher intensity ratings (M = 1.97) than were the inconsistent
ones (M = 1.53, F [1,35] = 15.95, p .01, eta2 = .31). The analysis of the magnitude of
the consequences showed that vocal cues affected the younger but not the older children's
responses (F[1,35] = 12.09, p .01, eta2 = .26; 5 year olds: consistent, M = 1.90, incon-
sistent, M = 1.32; 7 year olds: consistent, M = 1.75, inconsistent, M = 1.72).
4. The children's responses and response latencies to the nonsense items were not in-
cluded in the analyses. Only seven errors on the nonsense words suggest that the children
were attentive to the task. The nonsense words also served as a base measure of the
children's response times. Since the children's reaction times to these items also did not
vary as a function of the affect manipulation, the analyses were performed without sub-
tracting base reaction times.

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