Recently, 2022 Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) Excellent Doctoral Dissertation was announced. Dr. Yi Lin won the award for her dissertation entitled Prosodic dominance effects in multisensory emotional speech processing: Behavioral and electrophysiological investigations. Yi Lin completed her PhD dissertation under the guidance of her advisor Professor Hongwei Ding in the School of Foreign Languages. This has been the only dissertation awarded the honor from the departments of arts and humanities at SJTU. There are 15 awarded dissertations and 30 nominated dissertations in the school. 

Writer: Yi Lin 　Ａdvisor： Professor Hongwei Ding

The dissertation has been the first inter-disciplinary study to systematically explore the nature of multisensory emotional speech perception among healthy and clinical populations in a Mandarin-Chinese context. In the theoretical perspective, the dissertation can help refine the traditional models of spoken word recognition and emotion perception and contribute to the understanding of theoretical contentions on multisensory emotional speech perception in Chinese contexts. In the practical perspective, the dissertation can provide important insights for multi-modal communication practice in real-life settings. The findings from the basic behavioral and neurophysiological research can pay the way for advancing speech communication and social life by developing more effective diagnosis, treatment and training techniques for a large number of special populations such as individuals with psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia).