NPR talks to Lisa Feldman Barrett about the 'emotional grammar' of language

June 2, 2014

What's in a grunt? In a recent episode of All Things Considered, Shankar Vedantam spoke with the Martinos Center's Lisa Feldman Barrett about the ways in which we perceive emotions in sounds. Scientists have long assumed that sounds such as laughing and crying carry the same meaning across cultures. But is this actually the case? Barrett and colleagues tested the assumption and arrived at an interesting conclusion. Hear what she had to say about the study—or read a transcript from the episode—here