The Role of the Establishment of Causal Connections and the Modality of Presentation of Discourse in the Generation of Emotion Inferences by Argentine College Students

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.