Ability emotional intelligence: What about recognition of emotion in voices?

Functional connectivity during facial and vocal emotion recognition: Preliminary evidence for dissociations in developmental change by nonverbal modality

The developmental trajectory of emotion recognition (ER) skills is thought to vary by nonverbal modality, with vocal ER becoming mature later than facial ER. To investigate potential neural mechanisms contributing to this dissociation at a behavioural level, the current study examined whether youth's neural functional connectivity during vocal and facial ER tasks showed differential developmental change across time. Youth ages 8-19 (n = 41) completed facial and vocal ER tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, at two timepoints (1 year apart; n = 36 for behavioural data, n = 28 for neural data). Partial least squares analyses revealed that functional connectivity during ER is both distinguishable by modality (with different patterns of connectivity for facial vs. vocal ER) and across time-with changes in connectivity being particularly pronounced for vocal ER. ER accuracy was greater for faces than voices, and positively associated with age; although task performance did not change appreciably across a 1-year period, changes in latent functional connectivity patterns across time predicted participants' ER accuracy at Time 2. Taken together, these results suggest that vocal and facial ER are supported by distinguishable neural correlates that may undergo different developmental trajectories. Our findings are also preliminary evidence that changes in network integration may support the development of ER skills in childhood and adolescence.

Self-Rated Confidence in Vocal Emotion Recognition Ability: The Role of Gender

PURPOSE

We studied the role of gender in metacognition of voice emotion recognition ability (ERA), reflected by self-rated confidence (SRC). To this end, we guided our study in two approaches: first, by examining the role of gender in voice ERA and SRC independently and second, by looking for gender effects on the ERA association with SRC.

METHOD

We asked 100 participants (50 men, 50 women) to interpret a set of vocal expressions portrayed by 30 actors (16 men, 14 women) as defined by their emotional meaning. Targets were 180 repetitive lexical sentences articulated in congruent emotional voices (anger, sadness, surprise, happiness, fear) and neutral expressions. Trial by trial, the participants were assigned retrospective SRC based on their emotional recognition performance.

RESULTS

A binomial generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) estimating ERA accuracy revealed a significant gender effect, with women encoders (speakers) yielding higher accuracy levels than men. There was no significant effect of the decoder's (listener's) gender. A second GLMM estimating SRC found a significant effect of encoder and decoder genders, with women outperforming men. Gamma correlations were significantly greater than zero for women and men decoders.

CONCLUSIONS

In spite of varying interpretations of gender in each independent rating (ERA and SRC), our results suggest that both men and women decoders were accurate in their metacognition regarding voice emotion recognition. Further research is needed to study how individuals of both genders use metacognitive knowledge in their emotional recognition and whether and how such knowledge contributes to effective social communication.

Peculiarities of Categorical Perception of Dynamic Expressions of Complex Emotions

<p>We studied the categorical perception of dynamic expressions of complex emotions. A cluster analysis of perception of 70 expressions of 31 complex emotions from the CAM database was performed. An analysis of the consistency of assessments was carried out, and the signs of basic emotions in the assessments of the perception of expressions of complex emotions demonstrated by 1&ndash;3 different posers were investigated. In general, a low level of consistency in the assessments of the perception of expressions of complex emotions of negative categories is shown, in contrast to positive ones, which are evaluated more consistently. An analysis of the intensity of the leading features of basic emotions in the assessments of the expressions of different posers demonstrating the same complex emotion showed the dominance of a relatively stable structure of categories. Most of the expressions of different posers demonstrating the same complex emotion (69.33%) have similar assessments of the leading signs of basic emotions and fall into the same category, but a number of the expressions of complex emotions (30.77%) have more pronounced signs of additional basic emotions and fall into different categories. These emotions do not have a single mimic pattern and may have signs of basic emotions of opposite valence. The categorical perception of complex emotions is diverse and requires additional research.</p>