Associations between vocal emotion recognition and socio-emotional adjustment in children

Statistical Relationships Between Phonological Form, Emotional Valence and Arousal of Spanish Words

A number of studies have provided evidence of limited non-arbitrary associations between the phonological forms and meanings of affective words, a finding referred to as affective sound symbolism. Here, we explored whether the affective connotations of Spanish words might have more extensive statistical relationships with phonological/phonetic features, or affective form typicality. After eliminating words with poor affective rating agreement and morphophonological redundancies (e.g., negating prefixes), we found evidence of significant form typicality for emotional valence, emotionality, and arousal in a large sample of monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. These affective form-meaning mappings remained significant even when controlling for a range of lexico-semantic variables. We show that affective variables and their corresponding form typicality measures are able to significantly predict lexical decision performance using a megastudy dataset. Overall, our findings provide new evidence that affective form typicality is a statistical property of the Spanish lexicon.

Music, drama, and social development in Portuguese children

Introduction

Social competence plays a fundamental role in children's development, and in their functioning at school and in life. Social skills, as learned behaviors that allow children to positively interact with others, are important for success in both academic and peer-group settings. Children's participation in collective music and other arts education has been associated with the development of social skills. However, different measures and diverse programs adopted in various studies make it difficult to contrast study findings. Additionally, research with children from low-income families remains scarce. The aim of this study was to examine the role of music and drama education programs in primary schools on the development of social skills of Portuguese children from disadvantaged communities. Both programs were carefully designed with performing, creating, and listening activities, and were delivered by specialist and experienced teachers/performers, who used active and participatory teaching strategies.

Methods

In our longitudinal design with pre- and post-evaluations, we used the Social Skills Rating System or SSRS-Teacher Form, adapted for the Portuguese population. Classroom teachers rated their students' social skills on a 3-point scale in three domains: Social skills (Cooperation, Assertion, Self-control), Behavioral problems (Externalizing problems, Internalizing problems, Hyperactivity) and, on a 5-point scale, Academic competence.

Results and Discussion

Our findings suggest that participation in music and drama programs during one school year improved children's assertion and self-control, and cooperation in the drama group. Participation in the music and drama programs also appeared to serve as a protective factor by reducing externalizing, internalizing and behavioral problems. These findings are discussed in light of previous studies along with limitations and directions for future research.

Neural decoding of emotional prosody in voice-sensitive auditory cortex predicts social communication abilities in children

During social interactions, speakers signal information about their emotional state through their voice, which is known as emotional prosody. Little is known regarding the precise brain systems underlying emotional prosody decoding in children and whether accurate neural decoding of these vocal cues is linked to social skills. Here, we address critical gaps in the developmental literature by investigating neural representations of prosody and their links to behavior in children. Multivariate pattern analysis revealed that representations in the bilateral middle and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) divisions of voice-sensitive auditory cortex decode emotional prosody information in children. Crucially, emotional prosody decoding in middle STS was correlated with standardized measures of social communication abilities; more accurate decoding of prosody stimuli in the STS was predictive of greater social communication abilities in children. Moreover, social communication abilities were specifically related to decoding sadness, highlighting the importance of tuning in to negative emotional vocal cues for strengthening social responsiveness and functioning. Findings bridge an important theoretical gap by showing that the ability of the voice-sensitive cortex to detect emotional cues in speech is predictive of a child's social skills, including the ability to relate and interact with others.

Wireless Sensing Technology Combined with Facial Expression to Realize Multimodal Emotion Recognition

Emotions significantly impact human physical and mental health, and, therefore, emotion recognition has been a popular research area in neuroscience, psychology, and medicine. In this paper, we preprocess the raw signals acquired by millimeter-wave radar to obtain high-quality heartbeat and respiration signals. Then, we propose a deep learning model incorporating a convolutional neural network and gated recurrent unit neural network in combination with human face expression images. The model achieves a recognition accuracy of 84.5% in person-dependent experiments and 74.25% in person-independent experiments. The experiments show that it outperforms a single deep learning model compared to traditional machine learning algorithms.

Does music training enhance auditory and linguistic processing? A systematic review and meta-analysis of behavioral and brain evidence

It is often claimed that music training improves auditory and linguistic skills. Results of individual studies are mixed, however, and most evidence is correlational, precluding inferences of causation. Here, we evaluated data from 62 longitudinal studies that examined whether music training programs affect behavioral and brain measures of auditory and linguistic processing (N = 3928). For the behavioral data, a multivariate meta-analysis revealed a small positive effect of music training on both auditory and linguistic measures, regardless of the type of assignment (random vs. non-random), training (instrumental vs. non-instrumental), and control group (active vs. passive). The trim-and-fill method provided suggestive evidence of publication bias, but meta-regression methods (PET-PEESE) did not. For the brain data, a narrative synthesis also documented benefits of music training, namely for measures of auditory processing and for measures of speech and prosody processing. Thus, the available literature provides evidence that music training produces small neurobehavioral enhancements in auditory and linguistic processing, although future studies are needed to confirm that such enhancements are not due to publication bias.