Hearing the feeling: Auditory emotion perception in Williams syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Studies investigating recognition of facial expressions of emotions in Williams syndrome (WS) have reported difficulties in recognising negative expressions of emotion and a reliance on atypically developing underlying processes during task performance. AIM: The aim of the study was to extend these findings to the recognition of emotions in auditory domains. METHOD AND PROCEDURES: Children and adolescents with WS, together with chronological (CA) and verbal mental age matched (VMA) typically developing (TD) comparison groups, were asked to judge expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear in vocal and musical conditions. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Total emotion recognition scores did not differ between WS and VMA matched groups but profiles of discrimination across emotion categories were markedly different. For all groups, the accessibility of emotion category cues differed across music and speech domains. The results suggested that emotion discrimination is more strongly linked with cognitive ability in WS than in TD. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Although WS and TD groups showed a significantly different profile of discrimination across emotion categories, similarities in the pattern of discrimination across domains and in the correlates of auditory emotion processing were observed. The results are discussed in the context of typical and atypical developmental trajectories and compensatory mechanisms in WS.

Delayed auditory feedback simulates features of nonfluent primary progressive aphasia.

The pathophysiology of nonfluent primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA) remains poorly understood. Here, we compared quantitatively speech parameters in patients with nfvPPA versus healthy older individuals under altered auditory feedback, which has been shown to modulate normal speech output. Patients (n=15) and healthy volunteers (n=17) were recorded while reading aloud under delayed auditory feedback [DAF] with latency 0, 50 or 200 ms and under DAF at 200 ms plus 0.5 octave upward pitch shift. DAF in healthy older individuals was associated with reduced speech rate and emergence of speech sound errors, particularly at latency 200 ms. Up to a third of the healthy older group under DAF showed speech slowing and frequency of speech sound errors within the range of the nfvPPA cohort. Our findings suggest that (in addition to any anterior, primary language output disorder) these key features of nfvPPA may reflect distorted speech input signal processing, as simulated by DAF. DAF may constitute a novel candidate pathophysiological model of posterior dorsal cortical language pathway dysfunction in nfvPPA.