Social cognition in schizophrenic patients: the effect of semantic content and emotional prosody in the comprehension of emotional discourse

Perrine Brazo, Virginie Beaucousin, Laurent Lecardeur, Annick Razafimandimby, Sonia Dollfus, Perrine Brazo, Virginie Beaucousin, Laurent Lecardeur, Annick Razafimandimby, Sonia Dollfus

Abstract

Background: The recognition of the emotion expressed during conversation relies on the integration of both semantic processing and decoding of emotional prosody. The integration of both types of elements is necessary for social interaction. No study has investigated how these processes are impaired in patients with schizophrenia during the comprehension of an emotional speech. Since patients with schizophrenia have difficulty in daily interactions, it would be of great interest to investigate how these processes are impaired. We tested the hypothesis that patients present lesser performances regarding both semantic and emotional prosodic processes during emotional speech comprehension compared with healthy participants.

Methods: The paradigm is based on sentences built with emotional (anger, happiness, or sadness) semantic content uttered with or without congruent emotional prosody. The study participants had to decide with which of the emotional categories each sentence corresponded.

Results: Patients performed significantly worse than their matched controls, even in the presence of emotional prosody, showing that their ability to understand emotional semantic content was impaired. Although prosody improved performances in both groups, it benefited the patients more than the controls.

Conclusion: Patients exhibited both impaired semantic and emotional prosodic comprehensions. However, they took greater advantage of emotional prosody adjunction than healthy participants. Consequently, focusing on emotional prosody during carrying may improve social communication.

Keywords: emotion recognition; emotional discourse; emotional prosody; language system; schizophrenia; semantic comprehension; social cognition.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Protocol design. The experiment consisted of a training session and a separate experimental session. During each session, two blocks of sentences were presented: one contained sentences with emotional prosody and the other emotional prosody (order of presentation was randomly assigned to the participants). Each block during the training session contained 15 sentences (5 of each emotion), and each block during the experimental session was composed of 48 sentences (16 of each emotion). Each trial began with sentences that lasted approximately 3 s, followed by a 1-s pause for the response. Each trial ended with an interstimulus interval of 700 ms.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Group × prosody interaction on the percentage of response rate (±SD). Dashed line for controls’ performances, solid line for patients’ performances.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percentage of response rate (±SD). The results are given for the control (left panel) and patient groups (right panel) for sentences spoken with or without prosody. Solid line for happy, dashed line for anger, and dotted line for sadness.

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