title: Auditory tasks for assessment of sensory function and affective prosody in schizophrenia.
abstract: Schizophrenia patients exhibit impairments in auditory-based social cognition, indicated by deficits in detection of prosody, such as affective prosody and basic pitch perception. However, little is known about the psychometric properties of behavioral tests used to assess these functions. The goal of this paper is to characterize the properties of prosody and pitch perception tasks and to investigate whether they can be shortened. The pitch perception test evaluated is a tone-matching task developed by Javitt and colleagues (J-TMT). The prosody test evaluated is the auditory emotion recognition task developed by Juslin and Laukka (JL-AER). The sample includes 124 schizophrenia patients (SZ) and 131 healthy controls (HC). Properties, including facility and discrimination, of each item were assessed. Effects of item characteristics (e.g., emotion) were also evaluated. Shortened versions of the tests are proposed based on facility, discrimination, and/or ability of item characteristics to discriminate between patients and controls. Test-retest reliability is high for patients and controls for both the original and short forms of the J-TMT and JL-AER. Thus, the original as well as short forms of the J-TMT and JL-AER are suggested for inclusion in clinical trials of social cognitive and perceptual treatments. The development of short forms further increases the utility of these auditory tasks in clinical trials and clinical practice. The large SZ vs. HC differences reported here also highlight the profound nature of auditory deficits and a need for remediation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, USA; Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA. Electronic address: eva.petkova@nyumc.org.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Petkova
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Feihan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kantrowitz
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Jamie L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Sanchez
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lehrfeld
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Nayla
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Scaramello
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Gail
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Silipo
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Joanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: DiCostanza
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ross
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Zhe
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Javitt
authors.affiliation: Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA; Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Pamela D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Butler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012938:Social Perception; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*