Comment: The Next Frontier: Prosody Research Gets Interpersonal

Neurocognitive models (e.g., Schirmer & Kotz, 2006) have helped to characterize how listeners incrementally derive meaning from vocal expressions of emotion in spoken language, what neural mechanisms are involved at different processing stages, and their relative time course. But can these insights be applied communicative situations which prosody serves a predominantly interpersonal function? This comment examines recent data highlighting the dynamic interplay when attributes serve sociopragmatic goals speaker or reveal information that use construct mental representation is being communicated. Our as beacon researchers interested neurocognitive system “makes sense” socioemotive aspects prosody.