Judging emotion from the nonverbal properties of speech requires elimination of verbal cues. 3 methods of doing this are investigated: (a) a constant, ambiguous set of words for various emotional expressions, (b) filtering out the frequencies which permit word recognition, (c) speech in a language unknown to the listener. 7 actors portrayed the emotions, which were judged by 27 Ss, under all 3 conditions. Constant verbal content virtually requires artificially prepared situations. Filtered speech judgments depend partially on different individual differences from judgments of normal speech. Foreign speech (here, Japanese) may have different nonverbal cues from English. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)