Spanish validation of the “Reading the Mind in the Voice” task: A study of complex emotion recognition in adults with autism spectrum conditions

Abstract

BackgroundSocial cognition includes a range of cognitive processes that help individuals understand how others think and feel. Recent proposals outline the relevance of this cognitive domain in a broad set of clinical pictures, as well as its diagnostic and prognostic value. In this study, we present the Spanish validation of the Reading the Mind in the Voice (RMV-SV) task, (Rutherford et al., 2002), an instrument for the recognition of mental states and complex emotions through prosody. MethodA group of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD, n = 45) were compared to a control group from the general population (n = 51) in several emotion-recognition tasks. ResultsThe ASD group performed worse than controls overall on complex emotion and mental state recognition from voices (ŋ2 = .322; p < .01), statistically significant differences were found on 18/33 specific emotions. A positive correlation was found between verbal and nonverbal IQ and emotion recognition task scores. Using RMV-SV scores, 87.5% of the participants were correctly allocated to their original condition group. ConclusionsThe results confirmed the alteration of the recognition of mental states and complex emotions by prosody among adults diagnosed with ASD. The RMV-SV showed suitable validity and reliability indexes, so the adapted task could facilitate the evaluation of complex emotion recognition through prosody in Spanish.