The effect of prosody on listening comprehension: Immediate and delayed recall

Previous research has indicated that listening comprehension is affected by both linguistic and emotional prosody. Similarly, listening to natural speech (human voice) benefits listening comprehension more than synthesised speech (text-to-speech). The current study aimed to further investigate the effect of prosody on listening comprehension and its impact on memory performance in four different prosody conditions: natural speech (control); synthesised speech, and two manipulated human voice conditions (manipulating lexical stress and prosodic phrasing respectively). Crucially, we measured both immediate and delayed (one-week follow-up) recall of the content. Participants listened to four audio files playing different narrated texts read in each of the four prosody conditions (natural speech, synthesised speech, lexical stress, and prosodic phrasing). The participants then answered multiple-choice questions about the content of said texts. After one week, they answered the content-based multiple-choice questions again. The results showed that listening to the information in the unmanipulated human voice (natural speech) led to better memory retention compared to the other conditions in the immediate recall, but no differences between the conditions were found one week later. The findings indicate that while natural speech initially leads to better comprehension, this advantage may not persist over time.