Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:51:01.431Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The influence of emotion clarity on emotional prosody identification in paranoid schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2008

D. R. Bach*
Affiliation:
University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, Bolligenstrasse 111, 3000 Bern 60, Switzerland
K. Buxtorf
Affiliation:
University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, Bolligenstrasse 111, 3000 Bern 60, Switzerland
D. Grandjean
Affiliation:
Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, 7 rue des Battoirs, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland
W. K. Strik
Affiliation:
University Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Bern, Bolligenstrasse 111, 3000 Bern 60, Switzerland
*
*Address for correspondence: Dr D. R. Bach, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. (Email: d.bach@ucl.ac.uk)

Abstract

Background

Identification of emotional facial expression and emotional prosody (i.e. speech melody) is often impaired in schizophrenia. For facial emotion identification, a recent study suggested that the relative deficit in schizophrenia is enhanced when the presented emotion is easier to recognize. It is unclear whether this effect is specific to face processing or part of a more general emotion recognition deficit.

Method

We used clarity-graded emotional prosodic stimuli without semantic content, and tested 25 in-patients with paranoid schizophrenia, 25 healthy control participants and 25 depressive in-patients on emotional prosody identification. Facial expression identification was used as a control task.

Results

Patients with paranoid schizophrenia performed worse than both control groups in identifying emotional prosody, with no specific deficit in any individual emotion category. This deficit was present in high-clarity but not in low-clarity stimuli. Performance in facial control tasks was also impaired, with identification of emotional facial expression being a better predictor of emotional prosody identification than illness-related factors. Of those, negative symptoms emerged as the best predictor for emotional prosody identification.

Conclusions

This study suggests a general deficit in identifying high-clarity emotional cues. This finding is in line with the hypothesis that schizophrenia is characterized by high noise in internal representations and by increased fluctuations in cerebral networks.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bach, DR, Grandjean, D, Sander, D, Herdener, M, Strik, WK, Seifritz, E (2008). The effect of appraisal level on processing of emotional prosody in meaningless speech. Neuroimage 42, 919927.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Banse, R, Scherer, KR (1996). Acoustic profiles in vocal emotion expression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70, 614636.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bozikas, VP, Kosmidis, MH, Anezoulaki, D, Giannakou, M, Andreou, C, Karavatos, A (2006). Impaired perception of affective prosody in schizophrenia. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 18, 8185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bozikas, VP, Kosmidis, MH, Anezoulaki, D, Giannakou, M, Karavatos, A (2004). Relationship of affect recognition with psychopathology and cognitive performance in schizophrenia. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 10, 549558.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Edwards, J, Jackson, HJ, Pattison, PE (2002). Emotion recognition via facial expression and affective prosody in schizophrenia: a methodological review. Clinical Psychology Review 22, 789832.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Edwards, J, Pattison, PE, Jackson, HJ, Wales, RJ (2001). Facial affect and affective prosody recognition in first-episode schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research 48, 235253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ekman, P, Friesen, W (1975). Pictures of Facial Affect. Consulting Psychologists Press: Palo Alto, CA.Google Scholar
Feinberg, TE, Rifkin, A, Schaffer, C, Walker, E (1986). Facial discrimination and emotional recognition in schizophrenia and affective disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 43, 276279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaebel, W, Wolwer, W (1992). Facial expression and emotional face recognition in schizophrenia and depression. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 242, 4652.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gessler, S, Cutting, J, Frith, CD, Weinman, J (1989). Schizophrenic inability to judge facial emotion: a controlled study. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 28, 1929.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grandjean, D, Sander, D, Pourtois, G, Schwartz, S, Seghier, ML, Scherer, KR, Vuilleumier, P (2005). The voices of wrath: brain responses to angry prosody in meaningless speech. Nature Neuroscience 8, 145146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamilton, M (1960). A rating scale for depression. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 23, 5662.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hautzinger, M, Bailer, M, Worall, H, Keller, F (1994). The Beck Depression Inventory [in German]. Hans Huber: Bern.Google Scholar
Kay, SR, Fiszbein, A, Opler, LA (1987). The positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin 13, 261276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kee, KS, Horan, WP, Wynn, JK, Mintz, J, Green, MF (2006). An analysis of categorical perception of facial emotion in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research 87, 228237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohler, CG, Martin, EA (2006). Emotional processing in schizophrenia. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 11, 250271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohler, CG, Turner, TH, Bilker, WB, Brensinger, CM, Siegel, SJ, Kanes, SJ, Gur, RE, Gur, RC (2003). Facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: intensity effects and error pattern. American Journal of Psychiatry 160, 17681774.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kotz, SA, Meyer, M, Alter, K, Besson, M, von Cramon, DY, Friederici, AD (2003). On the lateralization of emotional prosody: an event-related functional MR investigation. Brain and Language 86, 366376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kucharska-Pietura, K, David, AS, Masiak, M, Phillips, ML (2005). Perception of facial and vocal affect by people with schizophrenia in early and late stages of illness. British Journal of Psychiatry 187, 523528.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leitman, DI, Foxe, JJ, Butler, PD, Saperstein, A, Revheim, N, Javitt, DC (2005). Sensory contributions to impaired prosodic processing in schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry 58, 5661.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leitman, DI, Hoptman, MJ, Foxe, JJ, Saccente, E, Wylie, GR, Nierenberg, J, Jalbrzikowski, M, Lim, KO, Javitt, DC (2007). The neural substrates of impaired prosodic detection in schizophrenia and its sensorial antecedents. American Journal of Psychiatry 164, 474482.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loh, M, Rolls, ET, Deco, G (2007). A dynamical systems hypothesis of schizophrenia. PLoS Computational Biology 3, 228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matsumoto, K, Samson, GT, O'Daly, OD, Tracy, DK, Patel, AD, Shergill, SS (2006). Prosodic discrimination in patients with schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry 189, 180181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mitchell, RL, Elliott, R, Barry, M, Cruttenden, A, Woodruff, PW (2003). The neural response to emotional prosody, as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neuropsychologia 41, 14101421.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, D, Cutting, J (1990). Prosodic comprehension and expression in schizophrenia. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 53, 727730.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, ML, Senior, C, David, AS (2000). Perception of threat in schizophrenics with persecutory delusions: an investigation using visual scan paths. Psychological Medicine 30, 157167.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sachs, G, Steger-Wuchse, D, Kryspin-Exner, I, Gur, RC, Katschnig, H (2004). Facial recognition deficits and cognition in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research 68, 2735.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sander, D, Grandjean, D, Pourtois, G, Schwartz, S, Seghier, ML, Scherer, KR, Vuilleumier, P (2005). Emotion and attention interactions in social cognition: brain regions involved in processing anger prosody. Neuroimage 28, 848858.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schirmer, A, Kotz, SA (2006). Beyond the right hemisphere: brain mechanisms mediating vocal emotional processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10, 2430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Turner, JLB (1964). Schizophrenics as judges of vocal expressions of emotional meaning. In The Communication of Emotional Meaning (ed. Davitz, J. R.), pp. 129142. McGraw-Hill: New York.Google Scholar
WHO (2004). International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). World Health Organization: Geneva.Google Scholar