The effects of emotional content and emotional voice on speech intelligibility in younger and older adults was investigated. Twenty-eight younger adults with good health and clinically normal hearing thresholds in the speech range were tested. The stimuli used were the 200 sentences from the NU6 lists. The stimuli were presented to one group visually as text on paper, and to two groups auditorally, through two loudspeakers in a sound-attenuating booth. Means were obtained for both valence and arousal ratings for all three groups. The SNR threshold data were collected on young adults with normal hearing by Richard Wilson and colleagues using the female voice. Analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between valence and arousal for participants in the visual condition. The results indicated that the emotional arousal of listeners to a particular word can affect intelligibility, depending on the modality of presentation.