title: Abnormal emotional word ratings in Parkinson's disease.
abstract: Blunted facial expressions and diminished expressions of emotional prosody associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) could be attributed to motor rigidity/akinesia. Although impaired recognition of emotional faces and prosody in PD suggests emotional dysfunction is not entirely motor-efferent, comprehension might depend upon imitation with motor feedback. Thus, to learn if patients with PD have an emotional conceptual defect, we examined their ratings for the emotional connotations of words on a 1-9 scale for valence and arousal. When compared to control participants the valence (positive-negative) and arousal (excited-calm) ratings of the PD patients were blunted, but their ratings of the control expense words (expensive-cheap) were not. These blunted emotion ratings suggest that patients with PD have a degradation of their emotional conceptual-semantic system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hillier
authors.forename: D Q
authors.initials: DQ
authors.lastname: Beversdorf
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Raymer
authors.forename: D J G
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Williamson
authors.forename: K M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Heilman
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001143:Arousal; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*