title: Impaired socio-emotional processing in a developmental music disorder.
abstract: Some individuals show a congenital deficit for music processing despite normal peripheral auditory processing, cognitive functioning, and music exposure. This condition, termed congenital amusia, is typically approached regarding its profile of musical and pitch difficulties. Here, we examine whether amusia also affects socio-emotional processing, probing auditory and visual domains. Thirteen adults with amusia and 11 controls completed two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants judged emotions in emotional speech prosody, nonverbal vocalizations (e.g., crying), and (silent) facial expressions. Target emotions were: amusement, anger, disgust, fear, pleasure, relief, and sadness. Compared to controls, amusics were impaired for all stimulus types, and the magnitude of their impairment was similar for auditory and visual emotions. In Experiment 2, participants listened to spontaneous and posed laughs, and either inferred the authenticity of the speaker's state, or judged how much laughs were contagious. Amusics showed decreased sensitivity to laughter authenticity, but normal contagion responses. Across the experiments, mixed-effects models revealed that the acoustic features of vocal signals predicted socio-emotional evaluations in both groups, but the profile of predictive acoustic features was different in amusia. These findings suggest that a developmental music disorder can affect socio-emotional cognition in subtle ways, an impairment not restricted to auditory information.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: César F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Lima
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Olivia
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Brancatisano
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fancourt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Müllensiefen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Sophie K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Scott
authors.affiliation: Dementia Research Centre, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Jason D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Warren
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.|Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University &Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Stewart
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music / Q000523:psychology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*