Vocal Emotion Recognition in Autism: Behavioral Performance and Event-Related Potential (ERP) Response

Overview

Journal J Autism Dev Disord

Publisher Springer

Date 2023 Jan 24

PMID 36694007

Authors

Talena C Day

Isha Malik

Sydney Boateng

Kathryn M Hauschild

Matthew D Lerner

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Autistic youth display difficulties in emotion recognition, yet little research has examined behavioral and neural indices of vocal emotion recognition (VER). The current study examines behavioral and event-related potential (N100, P200, Late Positive Potential [LPP]) indices of VER in autistic and non-autistic youth. Participants (N = 164) completed an emotion recognition task, the Diagnostic Analyses of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA-2) which included VER, during EEG recording. The LPP amplitude was larger in response to high intensity VER, and social cognition predicted VER errors. Verbal IQ, not autism, was related to VER errors. An interaction between VER intensity and social communication impairments revealed these impairments were related to larger LPP amplitudes during low intensity VER. Taken together, differences in VER may be due to higher order cognitive processes, not basic, early perception (N100, P200), and verbal cognitive abilities may underlie behavioral, yet occlude neural, differences in VER processing.

Citing Articles

Improved emotion differentiation under reduced acoustic variability of speech in autism.

Duville M, Alonso-Valerdi L, Ibarra-Zarate D BMC Med. 2024; 22(1):121.

PMID: 38486293 PMC: 10941423. DOI: 10.1186/s12916-024-03341-y.

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