Abnormalities in the processing of emotional prosody from single words in schizophrenia

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• 作者：Ana P. Pinheiro ; Neguine Rezaii ; Andr茅ia Rauber ; Taosheng Liu ; Paul G. Nestor ; Robert W. McCarley ; 脫scar F. Gon莽alves ; Margaret A. Niznikiewicz
• 关键词：Schizophrenia ; Emotional prosody ; Language ; Event-related potentials
• 刊名：Schizophrenia Research
• 出版年：January, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：152
• 期：1
• 页码：235-241
• 全文大小：651 K

文摘

Background

Abnormalities in emotional prosody processing have been consistently reported in schizophrenia and are related to poor social outcomes. However, the role of stimulus complexity in abnormal emotional prosody processing is still unclear.

Method

We recorded event-related potentials in 16 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 16 healthy controls to investigate: 1) the temporal course of emotional prosody processing; and 2) the relative contribution of prosodic and semantic cues in emotional prosody processing. Stimuli were prosodic single words presented in two conditions: with intelligible (semantic content condition鈥擲CC) and unintelligible semantic content (pure prosody condition鈥擯PC).

Results

Relative to healthy controls, schizophrenia patients showed reduced P50 for happy PPC words, and reduced N100 for both neutral and emotional SCC words and for neutral PPC stimuli. Also, increased P200 was observed in schizophrenia for happy prosody in SCC only. Behavioral results revealed higher error rates in schizophrenia for angry prosody in SCC and for happy prosody in PPC.

Conclusions

Together, these data further demonstrate the interactions between abnormal sensory processes and higher-order processes in bringing about emotional prosody processing dysfunction in schizophrenia. They further suggest that impaired emotional prosody processing is dependent on stimulus complexity.