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Recognition and evaluation of emotional prosody in individuals with generalized social phobia: A pilot study

2007; Elsevier BV; Volume: 45; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.brat.2007.08.003

1873-622X

Susanne Quadflieg, Beate Wendt, Alexander T. Mohr, Wolfgang H. R. Miltner, Thomas Straube,

Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

Studies using facial emotional expressions as stimuli partially support the assumption of biased processing of social signals in social phobia. This pilot study explored for the first time whether individuals with social phobia display a processing bias towards emotional prosody. Fifteen individuals with generalized social phobia and fifteen healthy controls (HC) matched for gender, age, and education completed a recognition test consisting of meaningless utterances spoken in a neutral, angry, sad, fearful, disgusted or happy tone of voice. Participants also evaluated the stimuli with regard to valence and arousal. While these ratings did not differ significantly between groups, analysis of the recognition test revealed enhanced identification of sad and fearful voices and decreased identification of happy voices in individuals with social phobia compared with HC. The two groups did not differ in their processing of neutral, disgust, and anger prosody.