Emotion Perception Skills Research Articles

Links Between Musicality and Vocal Emotion Perception

Links between musicality and vocal emotion perception skills have only recently emerged as a focus of study. Here we review current evidence for or against such links. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified 33 studies that addressed either (a) vocal emotion perception in musicians and nonmusicians, (b) vocal emotion perception in individuals with congenital amusia, (c) the role of individual differences (e.g., musical interests, psychoacoustic abilities), or (d) effects of musical training interventions on both the normal hearing population and cochlear implant users. Overall, the evidence supports a link between musicality and vocal emotion perception abilities. We discuss potential factors moderating the link between emotions and music, and possible directions for future research.

The same with age: Evidence for age-related similarities in interpersonal accuracy.

Interpersonal accuracy refers to the ability to make accurate perceptions about others' social and emotional qualities. Despite this broad definition, the measurement of interpersonal accuracy remains narrow, as most studies focus on the accurate perception of others' emotional states. Moreover, previous research has relied primarily upon traditional tasks consisting of posed, prototypic expressions and behaviors as stimuli. These methodological limitations may constrain our understanding of how different interpersonal perception skills change in adulthood. The present study investigated the extent to which various interpersonal perception skills are worse, better, or remain the same with age using both traditional and nontraditional interpersonal accuracy tasks. One hundred fifty-one adults from 3 age groups (young, middle age, and older) completed a battery of interpersonal accuracy tasks that assessed eight different emotion perception skills and six different social perception skills. Analyses revealed age-related differences in accuracy for five interpersonal perception skills; differences were typically observed between younger and older adults on emotion perception accuracy and between younger and middle-age adults on social perception accuracy. In contrast, almost all remaining interpersonal perception skills-both emotional and social-revealed greater evidence for age-related similarities than differences in Bayesian analyses. Additional exploratory analyses indicated that the observed age differences in interpersonal accuracy may be attributable to individual differences in cognitive ability rather than age. Results provide a nuanced picture of how interpersonal perception skills change in adulthood and provide new methodological tools for a more complete and comprehensive assessment of interpersonal accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Prosody perception and production by children with cochlear implants.

The perception and production of emotional and linguistic (focus) prosody were compared in children with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) peers. Thirteen CI and thirteen hearing-age-matched school-aged NH children were tested, as baseline, on non-verbal emotion understanding, non-word repetition, and stimulus identification and naming. Main tests were verbal emotion discrimination, verbal focus position discrimination, acted emotion production, and focus production. Productions were evaluated by NH adult Dutch listeners. All scores between groups were comparable, except a lower score for the CI group for non-word repetition. Emotional prosody perception and production scores correlated weakly for CI children but were uncorrelated for NH children. In general, hearing age weakly predicted emotion production but not perception. Non-verbal emotional (but not linguistic) understanding predicted CI children's (but not controls') emotion perception and production. In conclusion, increasing time in sound might facilitate vocal emotional expression, possibly requiring independently maturing emotion perception skills.

Responsiveness to the Negative Affect System as a Function of Emotion Perception: Relations Between Affect and Sociability in Three Daily Diary Studies.

Perceiving emotions clearly and accurately is an important component of emotional intelligence (EI). This skill is thought to predict emotional and social outcomes, but evidence for this point appears somewhat underwhelming in cross-sectional designs. The present work adopted a more contextual approach to understanding the correlates of emotion perception. Because emotion perception involves awareness of affect as it occurs, people higher in this skill might reasonably be expected to be more attuned to variations in their affective states and be responsive to them for this reason. This novel hypothesis was pursued in three daily diary studies (total N = 247), which found systematic evidence for the idea that higher levels of daily negative affect predicted lesser sociability particularly, and somewhat exclusively, among people whose emotion perception skills were high rather than low. The results support a contextual understanding of individual differences in emotion perception and how they operate.

The role of emotion perception in adaptive functioning of people with autism spectrum disorders

Cognitive functioning has historically been used to predict adaptive outcomes of people with autism spectrum disorders; however, research shows that it is not a complete predictor. The current study explored whether emotion perception was a predictor of adaptive outcomes, and more specifically, hypothesized that emotion perception (Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 error scores) would mediate adaptive functioning of people with autism spectrum disorder (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition). People with autism spectrum disorders demonstrated significantly lower adaptive functioning and emotion perception skills compared to typically developing individuals. Emotion perception acted as a significant mediator for socialization, but not communication or daily living skills, highlighting that in people with autism spectrum disorders, lower socialization abilities is the result, in part, of emotion perception deficits. It was unexpected that emotion perception was not a mediator for communication skills. This may be related to sample restrictions, or the narrow focus on emotion perception. Future research should involve a larger, more inclusive autism spectrum disorder sample, broaden approaches to exploring relationships between social perception and adaptive outcomes, and relate findings to brain mechanisms underlying emotion perception.

Sensitivity to emotion, empathy and theory of mind: Adult performance following childhood TBI

Primary objective: To examine deficits in emotion perception for adults who had experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) during childhood and investigate relationships between emotion perception skills, empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM).Design: Participants consisted of a random selection of individuals (n = 52) who had previously been recruited for a larger study. All participants had experienced an injury event as a child (0–17 years) (mild TBI, moderate/severe TBI or fractured limb) and were now aged between 18–30 years, with a minimum of 5 years post-injury.Methods and procedure: Each participant completed an emotion-sensitivity task, facial expression recognition task, the faux pas test (ToM) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory (IRI: Empathy).Main outcomes: Individuals with moderate/severe TBI were less sensitivite to emotion and less accurate at facial expression recognition than those with mild TBI and orthopaedic controls. Difficulty with affective ToM but not empathy was also found. The emotion-sensitivity and the facial expression recognition tasks were unrelated, with only emotion sensitivity but not expression recognition related to ToM and IRI empathy.Conclusions: The current findings indicated that deficits in social skills are long lasting and raises the issue of whether intervention to improve sensitivity to genuine emotion can influence more complex social skills and improve quality of social interactions for individuals following TBI.

Emotion perception in Alzheimer’s disease and mood disorder in old age.

Difficulties in understanding emotional signals might have important implications for social interactions in old age. In this study we investigated emotion perception skills involved in decoding facial expressions of emotion in healthy older adults, compared with those with Alzheimer's disease (AD) or late-life mood disorder (MD). Although those with MD were mildly impaired in identifying emotional expressions, this was not caused by negative biases in choosing labels. Emotion decoding performance in AD was much more impaired, particularly when relatively subtle expressions were presented. Difficulties in choosing between labels to describe an emotional face were predicted by executive dysfunction, whereas impaired ability to match 2 emotional faces was related to general difficulties with face perception. Across all 3 groups, problems with emotion perception predicted quality of life independently of variance predicted by cognitive function and mood, indicating the potential importance of emotion decoding skills in the well-being of older adults.