Effects of mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss and signal amplification on vocal emotion recognition in middle-aged-older individuals.

Previous research has shown deficits in vocal emotion recognition in sub-populations of individuals with hearing loss, making this a high priority research topic. However, previous research has only examined vocal emotion recognition using verbal material, in which emotions are expressed through emotional prosody. There is evidence that older individuals with hearing loss suffer from deficits in general prosody recognition, not specific to emotional prosody. No study has examined the recognition of non-verbal vocalization, which constitutes another important source for the vocal communication of emotions. It might be the case that individuals with hearing loss have specific difficulties in recognizing emotions expressed through prosody in speech, but not non-verbal vocalizations. We aim to examine whether vocal emotion recognition difficulties in middle- aged-to older individuals with sensorineural mild-moderate hearing loss are better explained by deficits in vocal emotion recognition specifically, or deficits in prosody recognition generally by including both sentences and non-verbal expressions. Furthermore a, some of the studies which have concluded that individuals with mild-moderate hearing loss have deficits in vocal emotion recognition ability have also found that the use of hearing aids does not improve recognition accuracy in this group. We aim to examine the effects of linear amplification and audibility on the recognition of different emotions expressed both verbally and non-verbally. Besides examining accuracy for different emotions we will also look at patterns of confusion (which specific emotions are mistaken for other specific emotion and at which rates) during both amplified and non-amplified listening, and we will analyze all material acoustically and relate the acoustic content to performance. Together these analyses will provide clues to effects of amplification on the perception of different emotions. For these purposes, a total of 70 middle-aged-older individuals, half with mild-moderate hearing loss and half with normal hearing will perform a computerized forced-choice vocal emotion recognition task with and without amplification.

Attentional Biases Towards Body Expressions of Pain in Men and Women.

This study investigated whether there are gender differences in attention to bodily expressions of pain and core emotions. Three experiments are reported using the attentional dot probe task. Images of men and women displaying bodily expressions, including pain, were presented. The task was used to determine whether participants' attention was drawn towards or away from target expressions. Inconsistent evidence was found for an attentional bias towards body expressions, including pain. While biases were affected by gender, patterns varied across the Experiments. Experiment 1, which had a presentation duration of 500 ms, found a relative bias towards the location of male body expressions compared to female expressions. Experiments 2 and 3 varied stimulus exposure times by including both shorter and longer duration conditions (e.g., 100 vs. 500 vs. 1250 ms). In these experiments, a bias towards pain was confirmed. Gender differences were also found, especially in the longer presentation conditions. Expressive body postures captured the attention of women for longer compared to men. These results are discussed in light of their implications for why there are gender differences in attention to pain, and what impact this has on pain behaviour. PERSPECTIVE: We show that men and women might differ in how they direct their attention towards bodily expressions, including pain. These results have relevance to understanding how carers might attend to the pain of others, as well as highlighting the wider role that social-contextual factors have in pain.

The unique role of parietal cortex in action observation: Functional organization for communicative and manipulative actions.

Action observation is supported by a network of regions in occipito-temporal, parietal, and premotor cortex in primates. Recent research suggests that the parietal node has regions dedicated to different action classes including manipulation, interpersonal interactions, skin displacement, locomotion, and climbing. The goals of the current study consist of: 1) extending this work with new classes of actions that are communicative and specific to humans, 2) investigating how parietal cortex differs from the occipito-temporal and premotor cortex in representing action classes. Human subjects underwent fMRI scanning while observing three action classes: indirect communication, direct communication, and manipulation, plus two types of control stimuli, static controls which were static frames from the video clips, and dynamic controls consisting of temporally-scrambled optic flow information. Using univariate analysis, MVPA, and representational similarity analysis, our study presents several novel findings. First, we provide further evidence for the anatomical segregation in parietal cortex of different action classes: We have found a new site that is specific for representing human-specific indirect communicative actions in cytoarchitectonic parietal area PFt. Second, we found that the discriminability between action classes was higher in parietal cortex than the other two levels suggesting the coding of action identity information at this level. Finally, our results advocate the use of the control stimuli not just for univariate analysis of complex action videos but also when using multivariate techniques.

Movement Synchrony and Facial Synchrony as Diagnostic Features of Depression: A Pilot Study.

ABSTRACT: The pilot study investigated with a matched-subjects design whether nonverbal synchrony is a diagnostic feature for depression and whether it mediates between depression and postsession ratings of the interviewer behavior. The sample includes n = 15 patients with major depression and n = 15 healthy controls (aged 20-30 years, 40% female). We conducted structured diagnostic interviews for somatic complaints to standardize the recording setting, issue, and course of conversation. Body movements and facial expressions were coded automatically frame by frame using computer vision methods. Ratings of the interviewers' professional behavior and positive affect were assessed using questionnaires. Patients with depression showed less movement synchrony and less synchronous positive facial expressions. Only synchronous positive expressions mediated between depression and less perceived positive affect. We conclude that the applied methodology is well suited to examine nonverbal processes under naturalistic but widely standardized conditions and that depression affects the nonverbal communication in medical conversations.

Social Interaction Skill Intervention for Autistic Adults with Intellectual Disability and Limited Language: A Pilot of the SKILL Program.

There is a dearth of research that focuses on social intervention efforts for adults on the autism spectrum with intellectual disability and limited conversational language. Using a multiple baseline experimental design, this pilot investigation of the Socialization Knowledge for Individuals with Limited Language (SKILL) program evaluated a novel peer-facilitated group program specifically designed to target social interaction skills for this population. Findings from five pilot participants yielded evidence of social improvements across specific verbal skills (on-topic conversational contributions and responses) and nonverbal behaviors (eye-contact, active listening), as evidenced by coded social conversation probes and parent-report measures. These findings demonstrate the promise of a socialization intervention for a population that has historically been neglected in the social intervention research literature.

Crossmodal Phase Reset and Evoked Responses Provide Complementary Mechanisms for the Influence of Visual Speech in Auditory Cortex.

Natural conversation is multisensory: when we can see the speaker's face, visual speech cues improve our comprehension. The neuronal mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain unclear. The two main alternatives are visually mediated phase modulation of neuronal oscillations (excitability fluctuations) in auditory neurons and visual input-evoked responses in auditory neurons. Investigating this question using naturalistic audiovisual speech with intracranial recordings in humans of both sexes, we find evidence for both mechanisms. Remarkably, auditory cortical neurons track the temporal dynamics of purely visual speech using the phase of their slow oscillations and phase-related modulations in broadband high-frequency activity. Consistent with known perceptual enhancement effects, the visual phase reset amplifies the cortical representation of concomitant auditory speech. In contrast to this, and in line with earlier reports, visual input reduces the amplitude of evoked responses to concomitant auditory input. We interpret the combination of improved phase tracking and reduced response amplitude as evidence for more efficient and reliable stimulus processing in the presence of congruent auditory and visual speech inputs.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Watching the speaker can facilitate our understanding of what is being said. The mechanisms responsible for this influence of visual cues on the processing of speech remain incompletely understood. We studied these mechanisms by recording the electrical activity of the human brain through electrodes implanted surgically inside the brain. We found that visual inputs can operate by directly activating auditory cortical areas, and also indirectly by modulating the strength of cortical responses to auditory input. Our results help to understand the mechanisms by which the brain merges auditory and visual speech into a unitary perception.

Pediatric Suffering and the Burden of Proof.

The alleviation of suffering has always been central to the care of the sick. Yet as medical technology has advanced and life-sustaining treatments multiplied, medicine's capacity to both prevent and create suffering has grown exponentially. In pediatric medicine, the ability to stave off death with life-sustaining treatments allows children to survive but also to suffer in ways that are diverse and unprecedented. However, although parents and pediatric clinicians broadly agree that all children can suffer, there is little published literature in which researchers analyze or clarify the concept of pediatric suffering. This gap is worrisome, especially in light of growing concerns that the label of suffering is used to justify end-of-life decision-making and mask quality-of-life determinations for pediatric patients with profound neurologic impairment. Moreover, the awareness that some children can experience suffering but cannot communicate whether and how they are suffering creates a problem. Does the determination of suffering in a nonverbal child lie in the judgement of clinicians or parents? In this article, I will address several important questions related to the suffering of children through an analysis of two prevalent conceptualizations of pediatric suffering and suggest a possible avenue forward for future scholarship.

Processing communicative facial and vocal cues in the superior temporal sulcus.

Facial and vocal cues provide critical social information about other humans, including their emotional and attentional states and the content of their speech. Recent work has shown that the face-responsive region of posterior superior temporal sulcus ("fSTS") also responds strongly to vocal sounds. Here, we investigate the functional role of this region and the broader STS by measuring responses to a range of face movements, vocal sounds, and hand movements using fMRI. We find that the fSTS responds broadly to different types of audio and visual face action, including both richly social communicative actions, as well as minimally social noncommunicative actions, ruling out hypotheses of specialization for processing speech signals, or communicative signals more generally. Strikingly, however, responses to hand movements were very low, whether communicative or not, indicating a specific role in the analysis of face actions (facial and vocal), not a general role in the perception of any human action. Furthermore, spatial patterns of response in this region were able to decode communicative from noncommunicative face actions, both within and across modality (facial/vocal cues), indicating sensitivity to an abstract social dimension. These functional properties of the fSTS contrast with a region of middle STS that has a selective, largely unimodal auditory response to speech sounds over both communicative and noncommunicative vocal nonspeech sounds, and nonvocal sounds. Region of interest analyses were corroborated by a data-driven independent component analysis, identifying face-voice and auditory speech responses as dominant sources of voxelwise variance across the STS. These results suggest that the STS contains separate processing streams for the audiovisual analysis of face actions and auditory speech processing.

SUPER scale to the rescue: reconciling what parents say and what they communicate during their child's pain.

Aim: Fully illuminating mechanisms relating parent behaviors to child pain require examining both verbal and nonverbal communication. We conducted a multimethod investigation into parent nonverbal communication and physiology, and investigated the psychometric properties of the Scheme for Understanding Parent Emotive Responses Scale to assess parent nonverbals accompanying reassurance and distraction. Materials & methods: 23 children (7-12 years of age) completed the cold pressor task with their parent (predominately mothers). Parent heart rate and heart rate variability were monitored and assessed. The Scheme for Understanding Parent Emotive Responses Scale coding of parent nonverbal behaviors (i.e., vocal cues, facial expressions, posture) was used to detect levels of fear, warmth, disengagement and humor. Results & conclusion: Preliminary evidence for the psychometric properties of the scale are offered. Parent reassurance was associated with more fear, less warmth and less humor compared with distraction.

Decoding the social volatilome by tracking rapid context-dependent odour change.

Odours can have a significant influence on the outcome of social interactions. However, we have yet to characterize the chemical signature of any specific social cue in human body odour, and we know little about how changes in social context influence odour chemistry. Here, we argue that adoption of emerging analytical techniques from other disciplines, such as atmospheric chemistry, might become game-changing tools in this endeavour. First, we describe the use of online chemical ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry to sensitively measure many hundreds of gas-phase volatile organic compounds in real time. By analysing ambient air emanating from undisturbed individuals or groups, the technique enables a continuous recording of an instantaneous odour change in response to external stimuli and changing social context. This has considerable advantages over the traditional approach of periodic sampling for analysis by gas chromatography. We also discuss multivariate statistical approaches, such as positive matrix factorization, that can effectively sift through this complex datastream to identify linked groups of compounds that probably underpin functional chemosignals. In combination, these innovations offer new avenues for addressing outstanding questions concerning olfactory communication in humans and other species, as well as in related fields using odour, such as biometrics and disease diagnostics. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Human olfactory communication: current challenges and future prospects.

Although anthropologists frequently report the centrality of odours in the daily lives and cultural beliefs of many small-scale communities, Western scholars have historically considered the sense of smell as minimally involved in human communication. Here, we suggest that the origin and persistence of this latter view might be a consequence of the fact that most research is conducted on participants from Western societies who, collectively, were rather old (adults), deodorized and desensitized (ODD) to various aspects of olfactory perception. The view is rapidly changing, however, and this themed issue provides a timely overview of the current state-of-the-art on human chemocommunication. Based on evolutionary models of communication, the papers cover both general mechanisms of odour production by 'senders' and odour perception by 'receivers'. Focus on specific functional contexts includes reciprocal impact of odours between infants and mothers, the role of odour in mate choice and how odours communicate emotion and disease. Finally, a position paper outlines pitfalls and opportunities for the future, against the context of the replication crisis in psychology. We believe a more nuanced view of human chemical communication is within our grasp if we can continue to develop inter-disciplinary insights and expand research activities beyond ODD people. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Body odours as a chemosignal in the mother-child relationship: new insights based on an human leucocyte antigen-genotyped family cohort.

Mothers are able to identify the body odour (BO) of their own child and prefer this smell above other BOs. It has hence been assumed that the infantile BO functions as a chemosignal promoting targeted parental care. We tested this hypothesis and examined whether children's BOs signal genetic similarity and developmental status to mothers. In addition, we assessed whether BOs facilitate inbreeding avoidance (Westermarck effect). In a cross-sectional design, N = 164 mothers participated with their biological children (N = 226 children, aged 0-18 years) and evaluated BO probes of their own and four other, sex-matched children. Those varied in age and in genetic similarity, which was assessed by human leucocyte antigen profiling. The study showed not only that mothers identified and preferred their own child's BO, but also that genetic similarity and developmental status are transcribed in BOs. Accordingly, maternal preference of their own child's odour changes throughout development. Our data partly supported the Westermarck effect: mothers' preference of pubertal boys' BOs was negatively related to testosterone for the own son, but not for unfamiliar children. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Olfaction scaffolds the developing human from neonate to adolescent and beyond.

The impact of the olfactory sense is regularly apparent across development. The fetus is bathed in amniotic fluid (AF) that conveys the mother's chemical ecology. Transnatal olfactory continuity between the odours of AF and milk assists in the transition to nursing. At the same time, odours emanating from the mammary areas provoke appetitive responses in newborns. Odours experienced from the mother's diet during breastfeeding, and from practices such as pre-mastication, may assist in the dietary transition at weaning. In parallel, infants are attracted to and recognize their mother's odours; later, children are able to recognize other kin and peers based on their odours. Familiar odours, such as those of the mother, regulate the child's emotions, and scaffold perception and learning through non-olfactory senses. During juvenility and adolescence, individuals become more sensitive to some bodily odours, while the timing of adolescence itself has been speculated to draw from the chemical ecology of the family unit. Odours learnt early in life and within the family niche continue to influence preferences as mate choice becomes relevant. Olfaction thus appears significant in turning on, sustaining and, in cases when mother odour is altered, disturbing adaptive reciprocity between offspring and carer during the multiple transitions of development between birth and adolescence. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Characterizing human odorant signals: insights from insect semiochemistry and in silico modelling.

Interactions relating to human chemical signalling, although widely acknowledged, are relatively poorly characterized chemically, except for human axillary odour. However, the extensive chemical ecology of insects, involving countless pheromone and other semiochemical identifications, may offer insights into overcoming problems of characterizing human-derived semiochemicals more widely. Current techniques for acquiring insect semiochemicals are discussed, particularly in relation to the need for samples to relate, as closely as possible, to the ecological situation in which they are naturally deployed. Analysis is facilitated by chromatography coupled to electrophysiological preparations from the olfactory organs of insects in vivo. This is not feasible with human olfaction, but there are now potential approaches using molecular genetically reconstructed olfactory preparations already in use with insect systems. There are specific insights of value for characterizing human semiochemicals from advanced studies on semiochemicals of haematophagous insects, which include those involving human hosts, in addition to wider studies on farm and companion animals. The characterization of the precise molecular properties recognized in olfaction could lead to new advances in analogue design and a range of novel semiochemicals for human benefit. There are insights from successful synthetic biology studies on insect semiochemicals using novel biosynthetic precursors. Already, wider opportunities in olfaction emerging from in silico studies, involving a range of theoretical and computational approaches to molecular design and understanding olfactory systems at the molecular level, are showing promise for studying human semiochemistry. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Chemosensory communication of aggression: women's fine-tuned neural processing of male aggression signals.

The current study is the first to examine the central nervous processing of aggression chemosignals within men and women by means of chemosensory event-related potential (CSERP) analysis. Axillary sweat was collected from 17 men and 17 women participating in a competitive computer game (aggression condition) and playing a construction game (control condition). Sweat samples were pooled with reference to donor gender and condition, and presented to 23 men and 25 women via a constant flow olfactometer. Ongoing electroencephalogram was recorded from 61 scalp locations, CSERPs (P2, P3-1, P3-2) were analysed and neuronal sources calculated (low-resolution electromagnetic tomography, LORETA). Women, especially, showed larger P3-1 and P3-2 amplitudes in response to male as compared with female aggression signals (all p values < 0.01). The peak activation of this effect was related to activity within the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 8). As male aggression commonly targets physical harm, the competence of the human brain to sensitively detect male aggression signals is considered to be highly adaptive. The detection of male aggression signals seems to be of higher importance for women than for men. It is suggested that the processing of male aggression signals in women induces an immediate response selection. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Noncredible effort on the Nonverbal-Medical Symptom Validity Test (NV-MSVT): Impact on cognitive performance in pediatric mild traumatic brain injury.

This study examined failure rates on the Nonverbal-Medical Symptom Validity Test (NV-MSVT) and its impact on cognitive performance in a sample of youths with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Participants were 184 children and adolescents who presented to a multidisciplinary concussion clinic for a targeted neuropsychological evaluation. Performance Validity Tests (PVTs) were a part of the standard battery, including the NV-MSVT. Twenty-eight participants (15.2%) failed the NV-MSVT, none of whom displayed a genuine memory impairment profile (GMIP). Participants who failed the NV-MSVT performed significantly worse than those who passed the NV-MSVT on measures of IQ, memory, and immediate attention/working memory. There was no significant difference between groups on processing speed, sustained attention, cognitive flexibility, or sight word reading level. Aside from a slight difference in age, NV-MSVT failure was not impacted by demographic variables (sex, race), premorbid risk factors (pre-injury ADHD, learning disabilities, psychiatric diagnoses or treatment, developmental delays, or prior special education), injury-related variables (time since injury, positive neuroimaging findings, post-traumatic amnesia, number of prior mTBIs, etc.) or post-mTBI anxiety/depression. That said, participants who failed NV-MSVT endorsed significantly more severe postconcussive symptoms. These findings support the use of the NV-MSVT in neuropsychological evaluation of children and adolescents with mTBI.

The importance of first impression judgements in interspecies interactions.

Close human-wildlife interactions are rapidly growing, particularly due to wildlife tourism popularity. Using both laboratory and ecological observation studies we explored potential interspecies communication signalling mechanisms underpinning human-animal approach behaviour, which to date have been unclear. First impression ratings (n = 227) of Barbary macaques' social and health traits were related to the macaques' facial morphology and their observed behaviour supporting a shared facial signalling system in primates. These ratings significantly predicted intended approach to the macaques during hypothetical interactions. Finally, real-world interspecies proximity was observed and found to be best predicted by the interaction between human first impression perception and animal behaviour. Specifically, perceived macaque health in interaction with actual macaque dominance drives close interactions despite human proclivity to avoid dominant animals, raising safety concerns in interspecies interactions.

A Moan of Pleasure Should Be Breathy: The Effect of Voice Quality on the Meaning of Human Nonverbal Vocalizations.

Prosodic features, such as intonation and voice intensity, have a well-documented role in communicating emotion, but less is known about the role of laryngeal voice quality in speech and particularly in nonverbal vocalizations such as laughs and moans. Potentially, however, variations in voice quality between tense and breathy may convey rich information about the speaker's physiological and affective state. In this study breathiness was manipulated in synthetic human nonverbal vocalizations by adjusting the relative strength of upper harmonics and aspiration noise. In experiment 1 (28 prototypes × 3 manipulations = 84 sounds), otherwise identical vocalizations with tense versus breathy voice quality were associated with higher arousal (general alertness), higher dominance, and lower valence (unpleasant states). Ratings on discrete emotions in experiment 2 (56 × 3 = 168 sounds) confirmed that breathiness was reliably associated with positive emotions, particularly in ambiguous vocalizations (gasps and moans). The spectral centroid did not fully account for the effect of manipulation, confirming that the perceived change in voice quality was more specific than a general shift in timbral brightness. Breathiness is thus involved in communicating emotion with nonverbal vocalizations, possibly due to changes in low-level auditory salience and perceived vocal effort.

Good vibrations: A review of vocal expressions of positive emotions.

Researchers examining nonverbal communication of emotions are becoming increasingly interested in differentiations between different positive emotional states like interest, relief, and pride. But despite the importance of the voice in communicating emotion in general and positive emotion in particular, there is to date no systematic review of what characterizes vocal expressions of different positive emotions. Furthermore, integration and synthesis of current findings are lacking. In this review, we comprehensively review studies (N = 108) investigating acoustic features relating to specific positive emotions in speech prosody and nonverbal vocalizations. We find that happy voices are generally loud with considerable variability in loudness, have high and variable pitch, and are high in the first two formant frequencies. When specific positive emotions are directly compared with each other, pitch mean, loudness mean, and speech rate differ across positive emotions, with patterns mapping onto clusters of emotions, so-called emotion families. For instance, pitch is higher for epistemological emotions (amusement, interest, relief), moderate for savouring emotions (contentment and pleasure), and lower for a prosocial emotion (admiration). Some, but not all, of the differences in acoustic patterns also map on to differences in arousal levels. We end by pointing to limitations in extant work and making concrete proposals for future research on positive emotions in the voice.

Interpreting foreign smiles: language context and type of scale in the assessment of perceived happiness and sadness

The current study focuses on how different scales with varying demands can affect our subjective assessments. We carried out 2 experiments in which we asked participants to rate how happy or sad morphed images of faces looked. The two extremes were the original happy and original sad faces with 4 morphs in between. We manipulated language of the task-namely, half of the participants carried it out in their native language, Spanish, and the other half in their foreign language, English-and type of scale. Within type of scale, we compared verbal and brightness scales. We found that, while language did not have an effect on the assessment, type of scale did. The brightness scale led to overall higher ratings, i.e., assessing all faces as somewhat happier. This provides a limitation on the foreign language effect, as well as evidence for the influence of the cognitive demands of a scale on emotionality assessments

El estudio actual se centra en cómo escalas diferentes con demandas cognitivas variadas pueden afectar nuestras evaluaciones subjetivas. Se realizaron dos experimentos en los que se les pidió a los participantes que evaluaran cuán felices o tristes les resultaban las expresiones de algunas caras. Los dos extremos eran las caras tristes y felices originales, con cuatro variaciones en el medio. Manipulamos el idioma de la tarea, de tal manera que la mitad de los participantes realizaron el estudio en su idioma nativo (español) y la otra mitad en su idioma extranjero (inglés), y también variamos el tipo de escala. Comparamos dos tipos de escalas de valoración: verbales y de brillo (gris). Encontramos que, si bien la lengua no tuvo un efecto en la evaluación, el tipo de escala sí lo tuvo: la escala de brillo llevó a calificaciones más altas en general. Es decir, los participantes evaluaron todas las caras como algo más felices con la escala de brillo. Esto ofrece una limitación al impacto de los efectos de lenguas extranjeras, proporcionando evidencia sobre la influencia que tienen las demandas cognitivas de la escala en las evaluaciones de emocionalidad