How major depressive disorder affects the ability to decode multimodal dynamic emotional stimuli

Most studies investigating the processing of emotions in depressed patients reported impairments in the decoding of negative emotions. However, these studies adopted static stimuli (mostly stereotypical facial expressions corresponding to basic emotions) which do not reflect the way people experience emotions in everyday life. For this reason, this work proposes to investigate the decoding of emotional expressions in patients affected by Recurrent Major Depressive Disorder (RMDDs) using dynamic audio/video stimuli. RMDDs’ performance is compared with the performance of patients with Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood (ADs) and healthy (HCs) subjects. The experiments involve 27 RMDDs (16 with acute depression - RMDD-A, and 11 in a compensation phase - RMDD-C), 16 ADs and 16 HCs. The ability to decode emotional expressions is assessed through an emotion recognition task based on short audio (without video), video (without audio) and audio/video clips. The results show that AD patients are significantly less accurate than HCs in decoding fear, anger, happiness, surprise and sadness. RMDD-As with acute depression are significantly less accurate than HCs in decoding happiness, sadness and surprise. Finally, no significant differences were found between HCs and RMDD-Cs in a compensation phase. The different communication channels and the types of emotion play a significant role in limiting the decoding accuracy

Emotional Prosody Measurement (EPM): A voice-based evaluation method for psychological therapy effectiveness

The voice embodies three sources of information: speech, the identity, and the emotional state of the speaker (i.e., emotional prosody). The latter feature is resembled by the variability of the F0 (also named fundamental frequency of pitch) (SD F0). To extract this feature, Emotional Prosody Measurement (EPM) was developed, which consists of 1) speech recording, 2) removal of speckle noise, 3) a Fourier Transform to extract the F0-signal, and 4) the determination of SD F0. After a pilot study in which six participants mimicked emotions by their voice, the core experiment was conducted to see whether EPM is successful. Twenty-five patients suffering from a panic disorder with agoraphobia participated. Two methods (storytelling and reliving) were used to trigger anxiety and were compared with comparable but more relaxed conditions. This resulted in a unique database of speech samples that was used to compare the EPM with the Subjective Unit of Distress to validate it as measure for anxiety/stress. The experimental manipulation of anxiety proved to be successful and EPM proved to be a successful evaluation method for psychological therapy effectiveness

Emotion processing and social participation following stroke : study protocol

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Communicating emotion in piano performance: Nuances used in expert and intermediate-level performances.

The purpose of this study was to determine how specific basic emotions were communicated in expert and intermediate level piano performances through the use of musical nuances. Two intermediate and two expert pianists recorded performances of three musical excerpts. Pianists performed each excerpt in four different ways, once to communicate each of the following basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and tenderness. Excerpts were performed on a Yamaha Disklavier and recorded as both audio CD tracks and MIDI files. Pianists were also interviewed to gather information concerning which nuances they planned to use to express each emotion. To determine the effectiveness of each pianist's emotional communication, 186 participants listened to recordings of these performances and rated each performance on its communication of the four emotions and its musical appeal. Each listener also provided information concerning his or her age and musical experience. MIDI data for performances were analyzed to determine how nuances of articulation, tempo, dynamics, pedal use, and voicing were used systematically by pianists.Results showed that both expert and intermediate level pianists were able to communicate basic emotions to listeners through their performances. Pianists varied widely in the ability to communicate emotion to listeners, with pianists' accuracy rates ranging from 25% to 75%. Pianists used specific nuances of articulation, tempo, timing, and dynamics to communicate the four emotions in ways that correspond to results of prior studies. This study also found that high happiness ratings were correlated with little damper pedal use, high sadness ratings were associated with significant damper pedal use and playing the melody louder than the accompaniment, high anger ratings were correlated with playing the accompaniment louder than the melody and little chord asynchrony, and high tenderness ratings were associated with significant damper pedal use, playing the melody louder than the accompaniment, and chord asynchrony. A MANOVA indicated that listeners found experts' performances to be significantly more musically appealing than intermediate level pianists' performances. Examination of interview data and MIDI nuance data indicated that most pianists were self-aware concerning the nuances that they used to communicate emotions

New Tests to Measure Individual Differences in Matching and Labelling Facial Expressions of Emotion, and Their Association with Ability to Recognise Vocal Emotions and Facial Identity

Although good tests are available for diagnosing clinical impairments in face expression processing, there is a lack of strong tests for assessing "individual differences"--that is, differences in ability between individuals within the typical, nonclinical, range. Here, we develop two new tests, one for expression perception (an odd-man-out matching task in which participants select which one of three faces displays a different expression) and one additionally requiring explicit identification of the emotion (a labelling task in which participants select one of six verbal labels). We demonstrate validity (careful check of individual items, large inversion effects, independence from nonverbal IQ, convergent validity with a previous labelling task), reliability (Cronbach's alphas of.77 and.76 respectively), and wide individual differences across the typical population. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the tests by addressing theoretical questions regarding the structure of face processing, specifically the extent to which the following processes are common or distinct: (a) perceptual matching and explicit labelling of expression (modest correlation between matching and labelling supported partial independence); (b) judgement of expressions from faces and voices (results argued labelling tasks tap into a multi-modal system, while matching tasks tap distinct perceptual processes); and (c) expression and identity processing (results argued for a common first step of perceptual processing for expression and identity).This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (http://www.arc.gov.au/) grant DP110100850 to RP and EM and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders (CE110001021) http://www.ccd.edu.au. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Emotion recognition from music-induced movement

Emotions color all aspects of our interaction with music. Not only composing music or playing a musical instrument, but also perceiving sounds and responding to them implicates the involvement of human emotions. An interesting type of musical interaction, in particular with regard to emotion research, is dance, which is believed to facilitate the expression of several different emotions in a non-verbal way. In this study, the aim was to examine emotion perception from dance movement. Thirty participants observed a selection of silent videos showing depersonalized avatars of dancers moving to an emotionally neutral musical stimulus after emotions of either sadness or happiness had been induced. After every film clip, the participants were asked to assess the emotional state of the dancer. Results revealed that the emotional state of the dancers was successfully identified. In addition, emotions were more often recognized for female dancers than for their male counterparts. Finally, results of eye tracking measurements showed that observers primarily focused on movements of the trunk when decoding emotional information from dance. The findings of this study show that induced emotions can be successfully recognized from dance movement. They also illustrate the significance of emotions in the coupling between music perception, cognition, and action

The automatic processing of non-verbal emotional vocalizations: an electrophysiological investigation

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Psicologia (área de especialização em Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde)The human voice is a critical channel for the exchange of information about the emotionality of a speaker. In this sense, it is important to investigate the neural correlates of non-verbal vocalizations processing, even when listeners are not attending to these events. We developed an oddball paradigm in which emotional (happy and angry) and neutral vocalizations were presented both as standard and deviant stimuli in four conditions: Happy, Angry, Neutral 1 (neutral vocalizations with angry context), and Neutral 2 (neutral vocalizations with happy context). To unfold the time course of the auditory change detection mechanisms indexed by the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component, the Event–Related Potentials (ERP) methodology was used. ERPs were recorded in 17 healthy subjects. The results showed that Happy and Neutral 2 conditions elicited more negative MMN amplitude relative to the Angry condition, at midline (Fz, Cz) electrodes. Overall results suggest that automatic auditory change detection is enhanced for positive and neutral (in happy context) vocalizations than for negative stimuli.A voz humana é um canal vital na troca de informação sobre a emocionalidade do outro. Neste sentido, é importante investigar quais os correlatos neuronais associados ao processamento de vocalizações não-verbais, mesmo quando não é alocada atenção a estes estímulos. Foi criado um paradigma oddball com vocalizações emocionais (alegria e raiva) e neutras, que eram apresentadas como estímulos frequentes ou infrequentes em quatro condições distintas: Alegre, Raiva, Neutro 1 (vocalizações neutras em contexto de raiva) e Neutro 2 (vocalizações neutras em contexto de alegria). Para investigar o curso temporal dos mecanismos automáticos de detecção de mudança auditiva, foi usada a técnica de Potenciais Evocados e estudado o componente Mismatch Negativity (MMN). A amostra foi constituída por 17 indivíduos saudáveis. Os resultados mostraram que as condições Alegre e Neutro 2 elicitaram uma amplitude de MMN mais negativa comparativamente com a condição Raiva, para os eléctrodos situados na linha média do escalpe (Fz, Cz). Estes resultados indicam que existe um mecanismo neuronal de deteção de mudança auditiva mais pronunciado para vocalizações positivas e neutras (em contexto de alegria) comparativamente com vocalizações negativas

Emotional Prosody Processing in the Schizophrenia Spectrum.

THESIS ABSTRACT Emotional prosody processing impairment is proposed to be a main contributing factor for the formation of auditory verbal hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia. In order to evaluate such assumption, five experiments in healthy, highly schizotypal and schizophrenia populations are presented. The first part of the thesis seeks to reveal the neural underpinnings of emotional prosody comprehension (EPC) in a non-clinical population as well as the modulation of prosodic abilities by hallucination traits. By revealing the brain representation of EPC, an overlap at the neural level between EPC and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) was strongly suggested. By assessing the influence of hallucinatory traits on EPC abilities, a continuum in the schizophrenia spectrum in which high schizotypal population mirrors the neurocognitive profile of schizophrenia patients was established. Moreover, by studying the relation between AVH and EPC in non-clinical population, potential confounding effects of medication influencing the findings were minimized. The second part of the thesis assessed two EPC related abilities in schizophrenia patients with and without hallucinations. Firstly, voice identity recognition, a skill which relies on the analysis of some of the same acoustical features as EPC, has been evaluated in patients and controls. Finally, the last study presented in the current thesis, assessed the influence that implicit processing of emotional prosody has on selective attention in patients and controls. Both patients studies demonstrate that voice identity recognition deficits as well as abnormal modulation of selective attention by implicit emotion prosody are related to hallucinations exclusively and not to schizophrenia in general. In the final discussion, a model in which EPC deficits are a crucial factor in the formation of AVH is evaluated. Experimental findings presented in the previous chapters strongly suggests that the perception of prosodic features is impaired in patients with AVH, resulting in aberrant perception of irrelevant auditory objects with emotional prosody salience which captures the attention of the hearer and which sources (speaker identity) cannot be recognized. Such impairments may be due to structural and functional abnormalities in a network which comprises the superior temporal gyrus as a central element

Investigating the psychological and emotional dimensions in instructed language learning: obstacles and possibilities

In this article I put forth the core argument that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) needs to account for the psychological and emotional dimensions of second language (L2) learning, but that a number of epistemological and methodological difficulties must be surmounted before this new research program can be a reality. To illustrate my arguments, I examine in depth 2 research programs developed by my colleagues and me over the last decade: research on extraversion as a psychological variable investigated within the tradition of individual differences in SLA, and research on the expression of emotion in the L2. Throughout the article, I argue against research isolationism and for more interdisciplinarity in the field of instructed SLA. I contend that research on instructed SLA would benefit from an increased methodological and epistemological diversity and that a focus on affect and emotion among researchers might inspire authors of teaching materials and foreign language teachers to pay increased attention to the communication of emotion and the development of sociocultural competence in a L2