In this paper, we present a novel texture image feature for Emotion Sensing in Speech (ESS). This idea is based on the fact that the texture images carry emotion-related information. The feature extraction is derived from time-frequency representation of spectrogram images. First, we transform the spectrogram as a recognizable image. Next, we use a cubic curve to enhance the image contrast. Then, the texture image information (TII) derived from the spectrogram image can be extracted by using Laws' masks to characterize emotional state. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed emotion recognition in different languages, we use two open emotional databases including the Berlin Emotional Speech Database (EMO-DB) and eNTERFACE corpus and one self-recorded database (KHUSC-EmoDB), to evaluate the performance cross-corpora. The results of the proposed ESS system are presented using support vector machine (SVM) as a classifier. Experimental results show that the proposed TII-based feature extraction inspired by visual perception can provide significant classification for ESS systems. The two-dimensional (2-D) TII feature can provide the discrimination between different emotions in visual expressions except for the conveyance pitch and formant tracks. In addition, the de-noising in 2-D images can be more easily completed than de-noising in 1-D speech.