Affective prosody labeling in youths with bipolar disorder or severe mood dysregulation.
BACKGROUND
Accurate identification of nonverbal emotional cues is essential to successful social interactions, yet most research is limited to emotional face expression labeling. Little research focuses on the processing of emotional prosody, or tone of verbal speech, in clinical populations.


METHODS
Using the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy, the current study examined whether youths with pediatric-onset bipolar disorder (BD) and/or those with chronic and severe irritability (i.e. the severe mood dysregulation phenotype) are impaired in their ability to identify the emotional prosody of a spoken sentence with neutral content.


RESULTS
Youths with severe mood dysregulation (n = 67) performed more poorly than healthy comparison children (n = 57), even when the sample was limited to unmedicated patients. Medicated BD youths (n = 52) exhibited impairment relative to healthy comparison children. No interactions between group and emotion were observed, suggesting that emotional prosody labeling problems may represent a general deficit in chronically irritable youths and in medicated youths with BD.


CONCLUSIONS
In concert with previously documented facial emotion labeling deficits, difficulties ascertaining the correct emotional tone of a spoken sentence may contribute to emotion dysregulation in chronically irritable children, and possibly also in youths with BD.
Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, USA. deveneycm@mail.nih.gov
Christen M
CM
Deveney
Melissa A
MA
Brotman
Ann Marie
AM
Decker
Daniel S
DS
Pine
Ellen
E
Leibenluft
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D000339:Affect; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007508:Irritable Mood; D008297:Male; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012919:Social Behavior