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

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

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3096-3103
Number of pages8
JournalBehaviour Research and Therapy
Volume45
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2007

Keywords

  • Emotional facial expressions
  • Emotional prosody
  • Information-processing bias
  • Social phobia

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